Engineering van der Waals heterostructures of layered Dirac materials for meV-scale quantum sensing*

Quantum sensing of meV-scale scattering and absorption of impinging particles with electrons in the solid state is critical both for quantum information applications and studies of fundamental physics. However, a challenge for current sensing schemes is to distinguish signals from particles of interest and from inherent excitations, like phonons, requiring operation at extreme cryogenic temperatures.

           

Here we propose a technique to selectively detect impinging particles based on their dispersion relations. By harnessing interfacial orbital hybridization in van der Waals heterostructures of Dirac materials, interlayer charge transfer is promoted only for pre-selected impinging particles. Using first-principles calculations of heterostructures of the layered Dirac materials ZrTe₅ and HfTe₅, we examine the effects of strain and layer number for successfully tuning orbital hybridization in their electronic structure. We demonstrate the feasibility of using Dirac materials to construct “dispersion filters” to be leveraged for next-generation quantum sensors.