Electrically tunable and enhanced nonlinearity of moiré exciton polaritons in transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers

We develop a microscopic theory for nonlinear optical response of moiré exciton polaritons in bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Our theory allows us to study the tunnel-coupled intralayer and interlayer excitonic modes for a wide range of twist angles (θ), external electric field, and light-matter coupling, providing insights into the hybridization regime inaccessible before. Specifically, we account for the umklapp scattering processes of two exciton polaritons responsible for enhanced nonlinearity, and show that it is crucial for describing interactions at strong hybridization. We reveal a regime of attractive nonlinearity for moiré polaritons, stemming from the anisotropic Coulomb interactions, which can explain some of experimental features of optical response in TMD bilayers. Furthermore, within our theory we demonstrate that the attractive nonlinearity can be tuned into repulsive by applying an external electric field. Our findings show that nonlinear moiré polaritons offer a controllable platform nonlinear polaritonic devices. Published by the American Physical Society 2025