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2D materials

When excitons lose their mass

Excitons are commonly regarded as massive composite quasiparticles. Now, experiments show that, in two-dimensional materials, light–matter interactions can turn excitons into massless collective modes with linear, photon-like dispersions.

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Fig. 1: Momentum-resolved electron energy-loss spectroscopic study and the dispersion of the lowest-energy bright exciton in two-dimensional materials.

References

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Acknowledgements

J.Z. thanks X. Jiang and Q. Zheng for helping with the proofreading and figure.

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Correspondence to Jin Zhao.

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Zhao, J. When excitons lose their mass. Nat. Phys. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-026-03214-6

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