2D arrays of hybridized emitters

2D arrays of emitters, such as atoms, molecules, defects, and quantum dots, can manifest fascinating physical phenomena–see, e.g., “Topological Quantum Optics in Two-Dimensional Atomic Arrays”, “Cooperative Resonances in Light Scattering from Two-Dimensional Atomic Arrays”, “Quantum metasurfaces with atom arrays”, and “A subradiant optical mirror formed by a single structure atomic layer”. In these aforementioned papers, it is assumed that the emitters interact with each other only via dipole-dipole interactions, as described in our entangled photon pair paper and our photon-photon quantum gate paper. Emitters can interact in other ways, however, and an obvious example is in 2D materials, where the emitters are brought so close to each other that their electronic wave functions overlap and generate chemical bonds. So what if these emitters actually have diffuse enough electronic wave functions and are brought close enough together that they start interacting not only via dipole-dipole interactions, but also by hybridizing their wave functions? This intermediate regime between 2D arrays of emitters vs. fully bonded atoms in 2D materials is relevant to, for instance, moire exciton arrays in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). We could study changes in the topological and optical properties as a function of degreeof orbital hybridization and orbital symmetry. This project would be rooted in theoretical methods of quantum optics to develop a minimal model, but we could quickly get into first-principles calculations if we wanted to calculate the wavefunctions of moire exciton arrays to plug into our model.