No Arabic abstract
Due to strong mode-confinement, long propagation-distance, and unique tunability, graphene plasmons have been widely explored in the mid-infrared and terahertz windows. However, it remains a big challenge to push graphene plasmons to shorter wavelengths in order to integrate graphene plasmon concepts with existing mature technologies in the near-infrared region. We investigate localized graphene plasmons supported by graphene nanodisks and experimentally demonstrated graphene plasmon working at 2 {mu}m with the aid of a fully scalable block copolymer self-assembly method. Our results show a promising way to promote graphene plasmons for both fundamental studies and potential applications in the near-infrared window.
Near-infrared epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metamaterial slabs based on silver-germanium (Ag-Ge) multilayers are experimentally demonstrated. Transmission, reflection and absorption spectra are characterized and used to determine the complex refractive indices and the effective permittivities of the ENZ metamaterial slabs, which match the results obtained from both the numerical simulations and the optical nonlocalities analysis. A rapid post-annealing process is used to reduce the collision frequency of silver and therefore decrease the optical absorption loss of multilayer metamaterial slabs. Furthermore, multilayer grating structures are studied to enhance the optical transmission and also tune the location of ENZ wavelength. The demonstrated near-infrared ENZ multilayer metamaterial slabs are important for realizing many exotic applications, such as phase front shaping and engineering of photonic density of states.
We propose a scheme to directionally couple light into graphene plasmons by placing a graphene sheet on a magneto-optical substrate. When a magnetic field is applied parallel to the surface, the graphene plasmon dispersion relation becomes asymmetric in the forward and backward directions. It is possible to achieve unidirectional excitation of graphene plasmons with normally incident illumination by applying a grating to the substrate. The directionality can be actively controlled by electrically gating the graphene, or by varying the magnetic bias. This scheme may have applications in graphene-based opto-electronics and sensing.
Sub-wavelength graphene structures support localized plasmonic resonances in the terahertz and mid-infrared spectral regimes. The strong field confinement at the resonant frequency is predicted to significantly enhance the light-graphene interaction, which could enable nonlinear optics at low intensity in atomically thin, sub-wavelength devices. To date, the nonlinear response of graphene plasmons and their energy loss dynamics have not been experimentally studied. We measure and theoretically model the terahertz nonlinear response and energy relaxation dynamics of plasmons in graphene nanoribbons. We employ a THz pump-THz probe technique at the plasmon frequency and observe a strong saturation of plasmon absorption followed by a 10 ps relaxation time. The observed nonlinearity is enhanced by two orders of magnitude compared to unpatterned graphene with no plasmon resonance. We further present a thermal model for the nonlinear plasmonic absorption that supports the experimental results.
Here we present an all-optical plasmon coupling scheme, utilising the intrinsic nonlinear optical response of graphene. We demonstrate coupling of free-space, visible light pulses to the surface plasmons in a planar, un-patterned graphene sheet by using nonlinear wave mixing to match both the wavevector and energy of the surface wave. By carefully controlling the phase-matching conditions, we show that one can excite surface plasmons with a defined wavevector and direction across a large frequency range, with an estimated photon efficiency in our experiments approaching $10^{-5}$.
Graphene plasmons are of remarkable features that make graphene plasmon elements promising for applications to integrated photonic devices. The fabrication of graphene plasmon components and control over plasmon propagating are of fundamental important. Through near-field plasmon imaging, we demonstrate controllable modifying of the reflection of graphene plasmon at boundaries etched by ion beams. Moreover, by varying ion dose at a proper value, nature like reflection boundary can be obtained. We also investigate the influence of ion beam incident angle on plasmon reflection. To illustrate the application of ion beam etching, a simple graphene wedge-shape plasmon structure is fabricated and performs excellently, proving this technology as a simple and efficient tool for controlling graphene plasmons.