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The field of two-dimensional (2D) materials-based nanophotonics has been growing at a rapid pace, triggered by the ability to design nanophotonic systems with in situ control, unprecedented number of degrees of freedom, and to build material heterostructures from the bottom up with atomic precision. A wide palette of polaritonic classes have been identified, comprising ultraconfined optical fields, even approaching characteristic length-scales of a single atom. These advances have been a real boost for the emerging field of quantum nanophotonics, where the quantum mechanical nature of the electrons and polaritons and their interactions become relevant. Examples include quantum nonlocal effects, ultrastrong light-matter interactions, Cherenkov radiation, access to forbidden transitions, hydrodynamic effects, single-plasmon nonlinearities, polaritonic quantization, topological effects, and so on. In addition to these intrinsic quantum nanophotonic phenomena, 2D material systems can also be used as sensitive probes for the quantum properties of the material that carries the nanophotonics modes or quantum materials in its vicinity. Here, polaritons act as a probe for otherwise invisible excitations, for example, in superconductors, or as a new tool to monitor the existence of Berry curvature in topological materials and superlattice effects in twisted 2D materials. In this Perspective, we present an overview of the emergent field of 2D-material quantum nanophotonics and provide a future perspective on the prospects of both fundamental emergent phenomena and emergent quantum technologies, such as quantum sensing, single-photon sources, and quantum emitters manipulation. We address four main implications: (i) quantum sensing, featuring polaritons to probe superconductivity and explore new electronic transport hydrodynamic behaviors, (ii) quantum technologies harnessing single-photon generation, manipulation, and detection using 2D materials, (iii) polariton engineering

A quantitative understanding of the electromagnetic response of materials is essential for the precise engineering of maximal, versatile, and controllable light-matter interactions. Material surfaces, in particular, are prominent platforms for enhancing electromagnetic interactions and for tailoring chemical processes. However, at the deep nanoscale, the electromagnetic response of electron systems is significantly impacted by quantum surface-response at material interfaces, which is challenging to probe using standard optical techniques. Here, we show how ultraconfined acoustic graphene plasmons in graphene-dielectric-metal structures can be used to probe the quantum surface-response functions of nearby metals, here encoded through the so-called Feibelman d-parameters. Based on our theoretical formalism, we introduce a concrete proposal for experimentally inferring the low-frequency quantum response of metals from quantum shifts of the acoustic graphene plasmons dispersion, and demonstrate that the high field confinement of acoustic graphene plasmons can resolve intrinsically quantum mechanical electronic length-scales with subnanometer resolution. Our findings reveal a promising scheme to probe the quantum response of metals, and further suggest the utilization of acoustic graphene plasmons as plasmon rulers with ångström-scale accuracy.

Tunable sources of X-ray radiation are widely used for imaging and spectroscopy in fundamental science, medicine and industry. The growing demand for highly tunable, high-brightness laboratory-scale X-ray sources motivates research into new fundamental mechanisms of X-ray generation. Here, we demonstrate the ability of van der Waals materials to serve as a platform for tunable X-ray generation when irradiated by moderately relativistic electrons available, for example, from a transmission electron microscope. The radiation spectrum can be precisely controlled by tuning the acceleration voltage of the incident electrons, as well as by our proposed approach: adjusting the lattice structure of the van der Waals material. We present experimental results for both methods, observing the energy tunability of X-ray radiation from the van der Waals materials WSe2, CrPS4, MnPS3, FePS3, CoPS3 and NiPS3. Our findings demonstrate the concept of material design at the atomic level, using van der Waals heterostructures and other atomic superlattices, for exploring novel phenomena of X-ray physics.

Two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting materials are promising building blocks for optoelectronic applications, many of which require efficient dissociation of excitons into free electrons and holes. However, the strongly bound excitons arising from the enhanced Coulomb interaction in these monolayers suppresses the creation of free carriers. Here, we identify the main exciton dissociation mechanism through time and spectrally resolved photocurrent measurements in a monolayer WSe2 p-n junction. We find that under static inplane electric field, excitons dissociate at a rate corresponding to the one predicted for tunnel ionization of 2D Wannier-Mott excitons. This study is essential for understanding the photoresponse of 2D semiconductors and offers design rules for the realization of efficient photodetectors, valley dependent optoelectronics, and novel quantum coherent phases.