Unidirectional surface plasmons in nonreciprocal graphene

• Main Authors: Lin, Xiao, Xu, Yang, Zhang, Baile, Hao, Ran, Chen, Hongsheng, Li, Erping
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Science::Physics::Optics and light; DRNTU::Engineering::Materials::Energy materials
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/99455; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/17639
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We demonstrate theoretically the existence of unidirectional surface plasmons in the nonreciprocal graphene-based gyrotropic interfaces. We show that a unidirectional frequency range is raised under a static external magnetic field where only one propagating direction is allowed for the surface plasmons mode. By efficiently controlling the chemical potential of graphene, the unidirectional working frequency can be continuously tunable from THz to near-infrared and even visible. Particularly, the unidirectional frequency bandwidth can be 1– 2 orders of magnitude larger than that in metal under the same magnetic field, which arises from the superiority of extremely small effective electron mass in graphene. Based on our theoretical analysis, two tunable graphene-based directional devices are proposed, showing the appealing properties of nonreciprocal graphene in the nonreciprocal optical devices design.