The optical spectra of two-dimensional (2D) materials exhibit sharp absorption peaks that are commonly identified with exciton and trions (or charged excitons). In this paper, we show that excitons and trions in doped 2D materials can be described by two coupled Schrödinger-like equations—one two-body equation for excitons and another four-body equation for trions. In electron-doped 2D materials, a bound trion state is identified with a four-body bound state of an exciton and an excited conduction-band electron-hole pair. In doped 2D materials, the exciton and trion states are the not the eigenstates of the full Hamiltonian and their respective Schrödinger equations are coupled due to Coulomb interactions. The strength of this coupling increases with the doping density. Solutions of these two coupled equations can quantitatively explain all the prominent features experimentally observed in the optical absorption spectra of 2D materials, including the observation of two prominent absorption peaks and the variation of their energy splittings and spectral shapes and strengths with the electron density. The optical conductivity obtained in our paper satisfies the optical conductivity sum rule exactly. A superposition of exciton and trion states can be used to construct a solution of the two coupled Schrödinger equations and this solution resembles the variational exciton-polaron state, thereby establishing the relationship between our approach and Fermi polaron physics.

• Received 17 May 2020
• Revised 22 June 2020
• Accepted 3 August 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.085304