Electron-exciton interactions in the exciton-polaron problem

Recently, it has been demonstrated that the absorption of moderately doped two-dimensional semiconductors can be described in terms of exciton polarons. In this scenario, attractive and repulsive polaron branches are formed due to interactions between a photoexcited exciton and a Fermi sea of excess charge carriers. These interactions have previously been treated in a phenomenological manner. Here, we present a microscopic derivation of the electron-exciton interactions which utilizes a mixture of variational and perturbative approaches. We find that the interactions feature classical charge-dipole behavior in the long-range limit, and that they are only weakly modified for moderate doping. We apply our theory to the absorption properties and show that the dependence on doping is well captured by a model with a phenomenological contact potential.