Valley-Selective Linear Dichroism and Excitonic Effects in Lieb-Lattice Altermagnets

Altermagnets have recently been recognized as a distinct class of magnetic materials characterized by alternative spin-split electronic structures without net magnetization. Despite intensive studies on their single-particle spintronic and valleytronic properties, many-electron interactions and optical responses of altermagnets remain less explored. In this work, we employ many-body perturbation theory to investigate excited states and their strain tunability. Using monolayer Mn2WS4 as a representative candidate, we uncover a novel spin valley-dependent excitonic selection rule in two-dimensional altermagnetic Lieb lattices. In addition to strongly bound excitons, we find that linearly polarized light selectively excites valley spin-polarized excitons. Moreover, due to the interplay between altermagnetic spin symmetry and electronic orbital character, we predict that applying uniaxial strain can lift valley degeneracy and enable the selective excitation of spin-polarized excitons, an effect not achievable in previously studied transition-metal dichalcogenides. These spin-valley-locked excitonic states and their strain tunability offer a robust mechanism for four-fold symmetric altermagnets to encode, store, and read valley/spin information.