Origins of electromagnetic anisotropy in monolayer black phosphorus

Contrary to empirical observations, lowest-order $k\cdot \widehat{p}$ theory predicts that monolayer black phosphorus (“phosphorene”) is completely immune to zigzag-polarized optical excitation at the bandgap energy. Using symmetry arguments, we derive a $2\times 2$ Hamiltonian under the $k\cdot \widehat{p}$ formalism including higher-order corrections, which is used to show that the experimentally-measured band-gap transition with zigzag polarization is dominated by the third order $k\cdot \widehat{p}$ perturbation in the interband optical matrix element, whereas the effects of spin-orbit interaction are negligible in this material, consistent with a trivial orbital diamagnetic contribution to the $\mathit{\text{g}}$-factor.