Exploring low-loss two-dimensional plasmon modes is considered central for achieving light manipulation at the nanoscale and applications in plasmonic science and technology. In this context, pump-probe spectroscopy is a powerful tool for investigating these collective modes and the corresponding energy transfer processes. Here, I present a first-principles study on non-equilibrium Dirac plasmon in graphene, wherein damping channels under ultrafast conditions are still not fully explored. The laser-induced blueshift of plasmon energy is explained in terms of thermal increase of the electron-hole pair concentration in the intraband channel. Interestingly, while damping pathways of the equilibrium graphene plasmon are entirely ruled by scatterings with acoustic phonons, the photoinduced plasmon predominantly transfers its energy to the strongly coupled hot optical phonons, which explains the experimentally-observed tenfold increase of the plasmon linewidth. The present study paves the way for an in-depth theoretical comprehension of plasmon temporal dynamics in novel two-dimensional systems and heterostructures.
The dielectric response of transparent conductive oxides near the bulk plasmon frequency is characterized by a refractive index less than vacuum. In analogy with x-ray optics, it is shown that this regime results in total external reflection and air-guiding of light. In addition, the strong reduction of the wavevector in the ITO below that of free space enables a new surface plasmon polariton mode which can be excited without requiring a prism or grating coupler. Ultrafast control of the surface plasmon polariton mode is achieved with a modulation amplitude reaching 20%.
Electron-hole generation and recombination rates for plasmon emission and absorption in Graphene are presented. The recombination times of carriers due to plasmon emission have been found to be in the tens of femtoseconds to hundreds of picoseconds range. The recombination times depend sensitively on the carrier energy, carrier density, temperature, and the plasmon dispersion. Carriers near the Dirac point are found to have much longer lifetimes compared to carriers at higher energies. Plasmons in a Graphene layer on a polar substrate hybridize with the surface optical phonons and this hybridi…
We measure nonlinear optical scattering from individual Au nanorods excited by ultrafast laser pulses on resonance with their longitudinal plasmon mode. Isolating single rods removes inhomogeneous broadening and allows the measurement of a large nonlinearity, much greater than that of nanorod ensembles. Surprisingly, the ultrafast nonlinearity can be attributed entirely to heating of conduction electrons and does not exhibit any response associated with coherent plasmon oscillation. This indicates a previously unobserved damping of strongly driven plasmons.
In this paper we propose and discuss coherent terahertz sources based on charge density wave (plasmon) amplification in two dimensional graphene. The coupling of the plasmons to interband electron-hole transitions in population inverted graphene layers can lead to plasmon amplification through stimulated emission. Plasmon gain values in graphene can be very large due to the small group velocity of the plasmons and the strong confinement of the plasmon field in the vicinity of the graphene layer. We present a transmission line model for plasmon propagation in graphene that includes plasmon diss…
We study the mid-infrared plasmonic response in Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene. Unlike its monolayer counterpart, bilayer graphene accommodates optically active phonon modes and a resonant interband transition at infrared frequencies. They strongly modifies the plasmonic properties of bilayer graphene, leading to Fano-type resonances, giant plasmonic enhancement of infrared phonon absorption, narrow window of optical transparency, and a new plasmonic mode at higher energy than the classical plasmon.
A variety of different graphene plasmonic structures and devices have been proposed and demonstrated experimentally. Plasmon modes in graphene microstructures interact strongly via the depolarization fields. An accurate quantitative description of the coupling between plasmon modes is required for designing and understanding complex plasmonic devices. Drawing inspiration from microphotonics, we present a coupled-mode theory for graphene plasmonics in which the plasmon eigenmodes of a coupled system are expressed in terms of the plasmon eigenmodes of its uncoupled sub-systems. The coupled-mode …
Controlling, detecting and generating propagating plasmons by all-electrical means is at the heart of on-chip nano-optical processing. Graphene carries long-lived plasmons that are extremely confined and controllable by electrostatic fields, however electrical detection of propagating plasmons in graphene has not yet been realized. Here, we present an all-graphene mid-infrared plasmon detector, where a single graphene sheet serves simultaneously as the plasmonic medium and detector. Rather than achieving detection via added optoelectronic materials, as is typically done in other plasmonic syst…
Chemically doped graphene could support plasmon excitations up to telecommunication or even visible frequencies. Apart from that, the presence of dopant may influence electron scattering mechanisms in graphene and thus impact the plasmon decay rate. Here I study from first principles these effects in single-layer and bilayer graphene doped with various alkali and alkaline earth metals. I find new dopant-activated damping channels: loss due to out-of-plane graphene and in-plane dopant vibrations, and electron transitions between graphene and dopant states. The latter excitations interact with t…
The fast decay of carrier inversion in photoexcited graphene has been attributed to optical phonon emission and Auger recombination. Plasmon emission provides another pathway that, as we show here, drives the carrier relaxation dynamics on ultrafast timescales. In studying the nonequilibrium relaxation dynamics we find that plasmon emission effectively converts inversion into hot carriers, whose energy is then extracted by optical phonon emission. This mechanism not only explains the observed fs-lifetime of inversion but also offers the prospect for atomically thin ultrafast plasmon emitters.
We derive the plasmon dispersion in doped double layer graphene (DLG), made of two parallel graphene mono-layers with carrier densities $n_1$ and $n_2$ respectively, and an inter-layer separation of $d$. The linear chiral gapless single particle energy dispersion of graphene leads to exotic DLG plasmon properties with several unexpected experimentally observable characteristic features such as a nontrivial influence of an undoped ($n_2=0$) layer on the DLG plasmon dispersion and a strange influence of the second layer even in the weak-coupling $d\to 0$ limit. Our predicted exotic DLG plasmon p…
Collective excitations of coupled electron-phonon systems are calculated for both monolayer and bilayer graphene, taking into account the non-perturbative Coulomb coupling between electronic excitations in graphene and the substrate longitudinal optical phonon modes. We find that the plasmon-phonon coupling in monolayer graphene is strong at all densities, but in bilayer graphene the coupling is significant only at high densities satisfying the resonant condition $ω_{pl} \approx ω_{ph}$. The difference arises from the peculiar screening properties associated with chirality of graphene. Plasmon…
Ultrasensitive acoustic graphene plasmons in a graphene-transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructure: strong plasmon-phonon coupling and wavelength sensitivity enhanced by a metal screen
Surface plasmons are collective oscillations of electrons in metals or semiconductors enabling confinement and control of electromagnetic energy at subwavelength scales. Rapid progress in plasmonics has largely relied on advances in device nano-fabrication, whereas less attention has been paid to the tunable properties of plasmonic media. One such medium-graphene-is amenable to convenient tuning of its electronic and optical properties with gate voltage. Through infrared nano-imaging we explicitly show that common graphene/SiO2/Si back-gated structures support propagating surface plasmons. The…
Owing to its excellent electrical, mechanical, thermal and optical properties, graphene has attracted great interests since it was successfully exfoliated in 2004. Its two dimensional nature and superior properties meet the need of surface plasmons and greatly enrich the field of plasmonics. Recent progress and applications of graphene plasmonics will be reviewed, including the theoretical mechanisms, experimental observations, and meaningful applications. With relatively low loss, high confinement, flexible feature, and good tunability, graphene can be a promising plasmonic material alternati…
The combination of plasmonic nanoparticles and graphene enhances the responsivity and spectral selectivity of graphene-based photodetectors. However, the small area of the metal-graphene junction, where the induced electron-hole pairs separate, limits the photoactive region to sub-micron length scales. Here, we couple graphene with a plasmonic grating and exploit the resulting surface plasmon polaritons to deliver the collected photons to the junction region of a metal-graphene-metal photodetector. This results into a 400% enhancement of responsivity and a 1000% increase in photoactive length,…
The decay dynamics of excited carriers in graphene have attracted wide scientific attention, as the gapless Dirac electronic band structure opens up relaxation channels that are not allowed in conventional materials. We report Fermi-level-dependent mid-infrared emission in graphene originating from a previously unobserved decay channel: hot plasmons generated from optically excited carriers. The observed Fermi-level dependence rules out Planckian light emission mechanisms and is consistent with the calculated plasmon emission spectra in photoinverted graphene. Evidence for bright hot plasmon e…
We investigated the dimensionality transition behavior of graphene localized plasmon resonances in confinement-controlled graphene devices. We first demonstrated a possibility of dimensionality transition, based on the devices carrier-density dependence, from a two-dimensional plasmon resonance to a one-dimensional plasmon one. We fabricated optical transparent devices and electrical transport devices on the same optical transparent wafer. These devices allow detailed control and analysis between carrier density and plasmon resonance peak positions. The carrier density from square root n (two-…
The interband pi and pi+sigma plasmons in pristine graphene and the Dirac plasmon in doped graphene are not applicable, since they are broad or weak, and weakly couple to an external longitudinal or electromagnetic probe. Therefore, the ab initio Density Function Theory is used to demonstrate that the chemical doping of the graphene by the alkali or alkaline earth atoms dramatically changes the poor graphene excitation spectrum in the ultra-violet frequency range (4 - 10 eV). Four prominent modes are detected. Two of them are the intra-layer plasmons with the square-root dispersion, characteri…
It is shown that one can explore the optical conductivity of graphene, together with the ability of controlling its electronic density by an applied gate voltage, in order to achieve resonant coupling between an external electromagnetic radiation and surface plasmon-polaritons in the graphene layer. This opens the possibility of electrical control of the intensity of light reflected inside a prism placed on top of the graphene layer, by switching between the regimes of total reflection and total absorption. The predicted effect can be used to build graphene-based opto-electronic switches.
The optical response of graphene micro-structures, such as micro-ribbons and disks, is dominated by the localized plasmon resonance in the far infrared (IR) spectral range. An ensemble of such structures is usually involved and the effect of the coupling between the individual structures is expected to play an important role. In this paper, the plasmonic coupling of graphene microstructures in different configurations is investigated. While a relatively weak coupling between graphene disks on the same plane is observed, the coupling between vertically stacked graphene disks is strong and a dra…
Graphene is an ideal material to study fundamental Coulomb- and phonon-induced carrier scattering processes. Its remarkable gapless and linear band structure opens up new carrier relaxation channels. In particular, Auger scattering bridging the valence and the conduction band changes the number of charge carriers and gives rise to a significant carrier multiplication - an ultrafast many-particle phenomenon that is promising for the design of highly efficient photodetectors. Furthermore, the vanishing density of states at the Dirac point combined with ultrafast phonon-induced intraband scatteri…
Fast carrier cooling is important for high power graphene based devices. Strongly Coupled Optical Phonons (SCOPs) play a major role in the relaxation of photoexcited carriers in graphene. Heterostructures of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have shown exceptional mobility and high saturation current, which makes them ideal for applications, but the effect of the hBN substrate on carrier cooling mechanisms is not understood. We track the cooling of hot photo-excited carriers in graphene-hBN heterostructures using ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy. We find that the carriers cool down f…
We show that plasmons in two-dimensional graphene can have net gain at terahertz frequencies. The coupling of the plasmons to interband electron-hole transitions in population inverted graphene layers can lead to plasmon amplification through the process of stimulated emission. We calculate plasmon gain for different electron-hole densities and temperatures and show that the gain values can exceed $10^{4}$ cm$^{-1}$ in the 1-10 terahertz frequency range, for electron-hole densities in the $10^{9}$-$10^{11}$ cm$^{-2}$ range, even when plasmon energy loss due to intraband scattering is considere…
In recent years, we have seen a rapid progress in the field of graphene plasmonics, motivated by graphene's unique electrical and optical properties, tunabilty, long-lived collective excitation and their extreme light confinement. Here, we review the basic properties of graphene plasmons; their energy dispersion, localization and propagation, plasmon-phonon hybridization, lifetimes and damping pathways. The application space of graphene plasmonics lies in the technologically significant, but relatively unexploited terahertz to mid-infrared regime. We discuss emerging and potential applications…
We propose a scheme for coupling laser light into graphene plasmons with the help of electrically generated surface acoustic waves. The surface acoustic wave forms a diffraction grating which allows to excite the long lived phonon-like branch of the hybridized graphene plasmon-phonon dispersion with infrared laser light. Our approach avoids patterning the graphene sheet, does not rely on complicated optical near-field techniques, and allows to electrically switch the coupling between far field radiation and propagating graphene plasmons.
When a two-level quantum dot and a plasmonic metal nanoantenna are resonantly coupled by the electromagnetic near field, the system can exhibit a Fano resonance, resulting in a transparency dip in the optical spectrum of the coupled system. We calculate the nonlinear response of such a system, for illumination both by continuous-wave and ultrafast pulsed lasers, using both a cavity quantum electrodynamics and a semiclassical coupled-oscillator model. For the experimentally relevant case of meV thermal broadening of the quantum-dot transition, we predict that femtosecond pulsed illumination can…
Nowadays, via controlling surface plasmons (SPs) on elaborate man-made structures, plasmonics aiming at manipulating light beyond the diffraction limit has aroused great interest. Here, nevertheless, we demonstrate in short-pulse laser ablation ultrafast active plasmonic structures spontaneously generate in virtue of plasmonic effects rather than human ingenuity. First, the splitting of laser-induced subwavelength gratings that is experimentally evidenced on ZnO, Si, and GaAs, is confirmed to originate in the conversion of SP modes from the resonant to the nonresonant mode and further to the i…
We analyze ultrafast electron dynamics in the time domain upon optical excitation of propagating surface plasmon-polaritons (SPs) in metal-dielectric heterostructures. Developing a kinetic model where both local and non-local electron relaxation in metals are included, we identify relevant timescales and extend the existing non-equilibrium electron dynamics framework onto the case of collective electronic excitations. The experimental data obtained in two distinct series of pump-probe measurements (with varied pump wavelength and angle of incidence) demonstrate SP-driven, one order of magnitud…
Graphene plasmonics is a rapidly growing field with multiple potential applications. One of the standard ways to study plasmons in graphene is by fabricating an array of graphene nanoribbons where nanoribbon edges provide the efficient photon-plasmon coupling. We systematically analyze the problem of optical plasmonic response in such systems and demonstrate the purely geometric nature of the size quantization condition for graphene plasmons. Accurate numerical calculations allowed us to tabulate the universal geometric parameters of plasmon size quantization, which is expected to become usefu…
Using the ultrafast pump-probe transient absorption spectroscopy, the femtosecond-resolved plasmon-exciton interaction of graphene-Ag nanowire hybrids is experimentally investigated, in the VIS-NIR region. The plasmonic lifetime of Ag nanowire is about 150 femtosecond (fs). For a single layer of graphene, the fast dynamic process at 275 fs is due to the excitation of graphene excitons, and the slow process at 1.4 picosecond (ps) is due to the plasmonic hot electron interaction with phonons of graphene. For the graphene-Ag nanowire hybrids, the time scale of the plasmon-induced hot electron tra…
We show that free electrons can efficiently excite plasmons in doped graphene with probabilities of order one per electron. More precisely, we predict multiple excitations of a single confined plasmon mode in graphene nanostructures. These unprecedentedly large electron-plasmon couplings are explained using a simple scaling law and further investigated through a general quantum description of the electron-plasmon interaction. From a fundamental viewpoint, multiple plasmon excitations by a single electron provides a unique tool for exploring the bosonic quantum nature of these collective modes.…
Plasmon in graphene possesses many unique properties. It originates from the collective motion of massless Dirac fermions and the carrier density dependence is distinctively different from conventional plasmons. In addition, graphene plasmon is highly tunable and shows strong energy confinement capability. Most intriguing, as an atom-thin layer, graphene and its plasmon are very sensitive to the immediate environment. Graphene plasmons strongly couple to polar phonons of the substrate, molecular vibrations of the adsorbates, and lattice vibrations of other atomically thin layers. In this revie…
The nonlinear optical dynamics of nano-materials comprised of plasmons interacting with quantum emitters is investigated by a self-consistent model based on the coupled Maxwell-Liouville-von Neumann equations. It is shown that ultra-short resonant laser pulses significantly modify the optical properties of such hybrid systems. It is further demonstrated that the energy transfer between interacting molecules and plasmons occurs on a femtosecond time scale and can be controlled with both material and laser parameters.
We show that in graphene epitaxially grown on SiC the Drude absorption is transformed into a strong terahertz plasmonic peak due to natural nanoscale inhomogeneities, such as substrate terraces and wrinkles. The excitation of the plasmon modifies dramatically the magneto-optical response and in particular the Faraday rotation. This makes graphene a unique playground for plasmon-controlled magneto-optical phenomena thanks to a cyclotron mass 2 orders of magnitude smaller than in conventional plasmonic materials such as noble metals.
Two rich and vibrant fields of investigation, graphene physics and plasmonics, strongly overlap. Not only does graphene possess intrinsic plasmons that are tunable and adjustable, but a combination of graphene with noble-metal nanostructures promises a variety of exciting applications for conventional plasmonics. The versatility of graphene means that graphene-based plasmonics may enable the manufacture of novel optical devices working in different frequency ranges, from terahertz to the visible, with extremely high speed, low driving voltage, low power consumption and compact sizes. Here we r…
The properties of surface plasmons localized at the interface between graphene and kerr-type nonlinear medium in three dimensions are investigated. Compared with surface plasmons at the surface of metal, with the inevitable nonlinear refractive effect, the confinement of plasmon can be improved to three times than graphene plasmons without nonlinear contribution, but also with almost the same relative propagation length. Moreover, the dispersion relation and propation distance of graphene plasmons can be easily controlled by changing the fermi energy, temperature and relaxation time of graphen…
Graphene plasmons have advantages over noble metal plasmons, such as high tunability and low loss. However, for graphene nanostructures smaller than 10 nm, little is known about their plasmons or whether a regular plasmonic behavior exists, despite their potential applications. Here, we present first-principles calculations of plasmon excitations in zigzag graphene nanoribbon segments. Regular plasmonic behavior is found: Only one plasmon mode exists in the low-energy regime (< 1.5 eV). The classical electrostatic scaling law still approximately holds when the width (W) is larger than about 1.…
Placing graphene on uniaxial substrates may have interesting application potential for graphene-based photonic and optoelectronic devices. Here we analytically derive the dispersion relation for graphene plasmons on uniaxial substrates and discuss their momentum, propagation length and polarization as a function of frequency, propagation direction and both ordinary and extraordinary dielectric permittivities of the substrate. We find that the plasmons exhibit an anisotropic propagation, yielding radially asymmetric field patterns when a point emitter launches plasmons in the graphene layer.
We theoretically investigate the ultrafast terahertz(THz) properties of monolayer graphene. The analytical formulations of the photon carrier, electric polarization and optical current are obtained by solving the Bloch-equations in present of the ultrafast THz Gaussian pulse. Graphene shows a large nonlinear and ultrafast optical response at THz frequencies due to the gapless and relativistic Dirac particles with nearly linear energy dispersion. It is found that the photon carrier density, electric polarization and optical current density increase with increasing the frequency of the THz pulse…
Coupling of plasmons in graphene at terahert (THz) frequencies with surface plasmons in a heavily-doped substrate is studied theoretically. We reveal that a huge scattering rate may completely damp out the plasmons, so that proper choices of material and geometrical parameters are essential to suppress the coupling effect and to obtain the minimum damping rate in graphene. Even with the doping concentration 10^{19} - 10^{20} cm^{-3} and the thickness of the dielectric layer between graphene and the substrate 100 nm, which are typical values in real graphene samples with a heavily-doped substra…
We calculate hybridization of plasmons and intrinsic optical phonons in graphene by using the self-consistent linear response formalism. We find that longitudinal plasmons (transverse magnetic modes) couple exclusively to transverse optical phonons, whereas graphene's transverse plasmons (transverse electric modes) couple only to longitudinal optical phonons. This mixing of polarizations is in contrast to the usual plasmon-phonon coupling in other systems. The resulting change in phonon frequencies increases (decreases) for transverse (longitudinal) phonons by increasing the concentration of c…
The short wavelength of graphene plasmons relative to the light wavelength makes them attractive for applications in optoelectronics and sensing. However, this property limits their coupling to external light and our ability to create and detect them. More efficient ways of generating plasmons are therefore desirable. Here we demonstrate through realistic theoretical simulations that graphene plasmons can be efficiently excited via electron tunneling in a sandwich structure formed by two graphene monolayers separated by a few atomic layers of hBN. We obtain plasmon generation rates of $\sim10^…
Surface plasmons in graphene may provide an attractive alternative to noble-metal plasmons due to their tighter confinement, peculiar dispersion, and longer propagation distance. We present theoretical studies of the nonlinear difference frequency generation of terahertz surface plasmon modes supported by two-dimensional layers of massless Dirac electrons, which includes graphene and surface states in topological insulators. Our results demonstrate strong enhancement of the DFG efficiency near the plasmon resonance and the feasibility of phase-matched nonlinear generation of plasmons over a br…
Using ultrafast pump-probe reflectivity with 3.1 eV pump and coherent white light probe (1.1 to 2.6 eV), we show that graphene on gold nanostructures exhibits a strong coupling to the plasmonic resonances of the ordered lattice hole array, thus injecting a high density of hot carriers in graphene through plasmons. The system being studied is single-layer graphene on ultrathin film of gold with periodic arrangements of holes showing anomalous transmission. A comparison is made with gold film with and without hole array. By selectively probing transient carrier dynamics in the spectral regions c…
We study the retardation regime of doped graphene plasmons, given by the nominal crossing of the unretarded plasmon and light-cone. In addition to modifications in the plasmon dispersion relation, retardation implies strong coupling between propagating light and matter, even for homogeneous graphene, which opens up the possibility of efficient plasmonics in simple graphene devices. We exemplify this enhancement in a double-layer configuration that exhibits {\em perfect} (if lossless) light transmissions across a classically forbidden region, providing a simpler analog of the corresponding phen…
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…
Pump-probe spectroscopy is central for exploring ultrafast dynamics of fundamental excitations, collective modes and energy transfer processes. Typically carried out using conventional diffraction-limited optics, pump-probe experiments inherently average over local chemical, compositional, and electronic inhomogeneities. Here we circumvent this deficiency and introduce pump-probe infrared spectroscopy with ~20 nm spatial resolution, far below the diffraction limit, which is accomplished using a scattering scanning near-field optical microscope (s-SNOM). This technique allows us to investigate …
Graphene, a two-dimensional material with a high mobility and a tunable conductivity, is uniquely suited for plasmonics. The frequency dispersion of plasmons in bulk graphene has been studied both theoretically and experimentally, whereas no theoretical models have been reported and tested against experiments for confined plasmon modes in graphene microstructures. In this paper, we present experimental measurements as well as analytical and computational models for such confined modes. We compare experimental measurements with theory for plasmon modes in interacting arrays of graphene strips a…
We theoretically demonstrate that a system formed by a drift-current biased graphene sheet on a silicon carbide substrate enables loss compensation and plasmon amplification. The active response of the graphene sheet is rooted in the optical pumping of the graphene plasmons with the gain provided by the streaming current carriers. The proposed system behaves as an optical amplifier for the plasmons co-propagating with the drifting electrons and as a strong attenuator for the counter-propagating plasmons. Furthermore, we show that the feedback obtained by connecting the input and output of the …
With the unique possibilities for controlling light in nanoscale devices, graphene plasmonics has opened new perspectives to the nanophotonics community with potential applications in metamaterials, modulators, photodetectors, and sensors. This paper briefly reviews the recent exciting progress in graphene plasmonics. We begin with a general description for optical properties of graphene, particularly focusing on the dispersion of graphene-plasmon polaritons. The dispersion relation of graphene-plasmon polaritons of spatially extended graphene is expressed in terms of the local response limit …
We present a magnetically biased graphene-ferrite structure discriminating the TE and TM plasmonic modes of graphene. In this structure, the graphene TM plasmons interact reciprocally with the structure. In contrast, the graphene TE plasmons exhibit nonreciprocity. This nonreciprocity is manifested in unidirectional TE propagation in a frequency band close to the interband threshold frequency. The proposed structure provides a unique platform for the experimental demonstration of the unusual existence of the TE plasmonic mode in graphene.
Graphene supports strongly confined transverse-magnetic sheet plasmons whose spectral characteristics depend on the energetic distribution of Dirac particles. The question arises whether plasmons can become amplified when graphene is pumped into a state of inversion. In establishing a theory for the dynamic non-equilibrium polarizability, we are able to determine the exact complex-frequency plasmon dispersion of photo-inverted graphene and study the impact of doping, collision loss, and temperature on the plasmon gain. We calculate the spontaneous emission spectra and carrier recombination rat…
We report the dispersion measurements, using angle-resolved reflection electron-energy-loss-spectroscopy (AREELS), on two-dimensional (2D) plasmons in single and multilayer graphene which couple strongly to surface optical phonon (FK phonon) modes of silicon carbide substrate. The coupled modes show discrete dispersion behaviors in the single and bilayer graphene. With increasing graphene layers on SiC(0001), a transition from plasmon-like dispersion to phonon-like dispersion is observed. For plasmon-like modes, the dispersion is strongly damped by electron-hole pair excitations at entering si…
We report experimental signatures of plasmonic effects due to electron tunneling between adjacent graphene layers. At sub-nanometer separation, such layers can form either a strongly coupled bilayer graphene with a Bernal stacking or a weakly coupled double-layer graphene with a random stacking order. Effects due to interlayer tunneling dominate in the former case but are negligible in the latter. We found through infrared nano-imaging that bilayer graphene supports plasmons with a higher degree of confinement compared to single- and double-layer graphene, a direct consequence of interlayer tu…
Numerical and closed-form analytic expressions for plasmon dispersion relations and rates of dissipation are first obtained at finite-temperatures for free-standing gapped graphene. These closed-system results are generalized to an open system with Coulomb coupling of graphene electrons to an external electron reservoir. New plasmon modes, as well as new plasmon dissipation channels, are found in this open system, including significant modifications arising from the combined effect of thermal excitation of electrons and an energy bandgap in gapped graphene. Moreover, the characteristics of the…
We present a simple device architecture that allows all-electrical detection of plasmons in a graphene waveguide. The key principle of our electrical plasmon detection scheme is the non-linear nature of the hydrodynamic equations of motion that describe transport in graphene at room temperature and in a wide range of carrier densities. These non-linearities yield a dc voltage in response to the oscillating field of a propagating plasmon. For illustrative purposes, we calculate the dc voltage arising from the propagation of the lowest-energy modes in a fully analytical fashion. Our device archi…
