Flexural deformations and collapse of bilayer two-dimensional crystals by interlayer excitons

We develop a consistent theory of the interlayer exciton-polaron formed in atomically thin bilayers. Coulomb attraction between an electron and a hole situated in the different layers results in their flexural deformation and provides an efficient mechanism of the exciton coupling with flexural phonons. We study the effect of layers tension on the polaron binding energy and effective mass leading to suppression of polaron formation by the tension both in the weak and strong coupling regimes. We also consider the role of the nonlinearity related to the interaction between the out- and in-plane lattice displacements and obtain the criterion of the layer sticking, where the exciton collapses due to the Coulomb attraction between the charge carriers.