Longfang Ye

Broadband absorber with periodically sinusoidally-patterned graphene layer in terahertz range

We demonstrate that a broadband terahertz absorber with near-unity absorption can be realized using a net-shaped periodically sinusoidally-patterned graphene sheet, placed on a dielectric spacer supported on a metallic reflecting plate. Because of the gradient width modulation of the unit graphene sheet, continuous plasmon resonances can be excited, and therefore broadband terahertz absorption can be achieved. The results show that the absorbers normalized bandwidth of 90% terahertz absorbance is over 65% under normal incidence for both TE and TM polarizations when the graphene chemical potential is set as 0.7 eV. And the broadband absorption is insensitive to the incident angles and the polarizations. The peak absorbance remains more than 70% over a wide range of the incident angles up to 60° for both polarizations. Furthermore, this absorber also has the advantage of flexible tunability via electrostatic doping of graphene sheet, which peak absorbance can be continuously tuned from 14% to 100% by controlling the chemical potential from 0 eV to 0.8 eV. The design scheme is scalable to develop various graphene-based tunable broadband absorbers at other terahertz, infrared, and visible frequencies, which may have promising applications in sensing, detecting, and optoelectronic devices.

Enhanced spatial near-infrared modulation of graphene-loaded perfect absorbers using plasmonic nanoslits.

Modulating spatial near-infrared light for ultra-compact electro-optic devices is a critical issue in optical communication and imaging applications. To date, spatial near-infrared modulators based on graphene have been reported, but they showed limited modulation effects due to the relatively weak light-graphene interaction. In combination with graphene and metallic nanoslits, we design a kind of ultrathin near-infrared perfect absorber with enhanced spatial modulation effects and independence on a wide range of incident angles. The modulated spectral shift of central wavelength is up to 258.2 nm in the near-infrared range, which is more promising in applications than state-of-the-art devices. The modulation enhancement is attributed to the plasmonic nanoslit mode, in which the optical electric field is highly concentrated in the deep subwavelength scale and the light-graphene interaction is significantly strengthened. The physical insight is deeply revealed by a combination of equivalent circuit and electromagnetic field analysis. The design principles are not only crucial for spatial near-infrared modulators, but also provide a key guide for developing active near-infrared patch nanoantennas based on graphene.

Strongly Confined Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Waveguiding Enabled by Planar Staggered Plasmonic Waveguides

We demonstrate a novel route to achieving highly efficient and strongly confined spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) waveguides at subwavelength scale enabled by planar staggered plasmonic waveguides (PSPWs). The structure of these new waveguides consists of an ultrathin metallic strip with periodic subwavelength staggered double groove arrays supported by a flexible dielectric substrate, leading to unique staggered EM coupling and waveguiding phenomenon. The spoof SPP propagation properties, including dispersion relations and near field distributions, are numerically investigated. Furthermore, broadband coplanar waveguide (CPW) to planar staggered plasmonic waveguide (PSPW) transitions are designed to achieve smooth momentum matching and highly efficient spoof SPP mode conversion. By applying these transitions, a CPW-PSPW-CPW structure is designed, fabricated and measured to verify the PSPW’s propagation performance at microwave frequencies. The investigation results show the proposed PSPWs have excellent performance of deep subwavelength spoof SPPs confinement, long propagation length and low bend loss, as well as great design flexibility to engineer the propagation properties by adjusting their geometry dimensions and material parameters. Our work opens up a new avenue for development of various advanced planar integrated plasmonic devices and circuits in microwave and terahertz regimes.

Electrically Tunable Broadband Terahertz Absorption with Hybrid-Patterned Graphene Metasurfaces

We numerically demonstrate a broadband terahertz (THz) absorber that is based on a hybrid-patterned graphene metasurface with excellent properties of polarization insensitivity, wide-angle, and active tunability. Our design is made up of a single-layer graphene with periodically arranged hybrid square/disk/loop patterns on a multilayer structure. We find that broadband absorption with 90% terahertz absorbance and the fractional bandwidth of 84.5% from 1.38 THz to 3.4 THz can be achieved. Because of the axisymmetric configuration, the absorber demonstrates absolute polarization independence for both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarized terahertz waves under normal incidence. We also show that a bandwidth of 60% absorbance still remains 2.7 THz, ranging from 1.3 THz to 4 THz, for a wide incident angle ranging from 0° to 60°. Finally, we find that by changing the graphene Fermi energy from 0.7 eV to 0 eV, the absorbance of the absorbers can be easily tuned from more than 90% to lower than 20%. The proposed absorber may have promising applications in terahertz sensing, detecting, imaging, and cloaking.

Near unity ultraviolet absorption in graphene without patterning

Enhancing the light–matter interaction of graphene is an important issue for related photonic devices and applications. In view of its potential ultraviolet applications, we aim to achieve extremely high ultraviolet absorption in graphene without any nanostructure or microstructure patterning. By manipulating the polarization and angle of incident light, the ultraviolet power can be sufficiently coupled to the optical dissipation of graphene based on single-channel coherent perfect absorption in an optimized multilayered thin film structure. The ultraviolet absorbance ratios of single and four atomic graphene layers are enhanced up to 71.4% and 92.2%, respectively. Our research provides a simple and efficient scheme to trap ultraviolet light for developing promising photonic and optoelectronic devices based on graphene and potentially other 2D materials.

Multiple resonant excitations of surface plasmons in a graphene stratified slab by Otto configuration and their independent tuning

Multiple resonant excitations of surface plasmons in a graphene stratified slab are realized by Otto configuration at terahertz frequencies. The proposed graphene stratified slab consists of alternating dielectric layers and graphene sheets, and is sandwiched between a prism and another semi-infinite medium. Optical response and field distribution are determined by the transfer matrix method with the surface current density boundary condition. Multiple resonant excitations appear on the angular reflection spectrum, and are analyzed theoretically via the phase-matching condition. Furthermore, the effects of the system parameters are investigated. Among them, the Fermi levels can tune the corresponding resonances independently. The proposed concept can be engineered for promising applications, including angular selective or multiplex filters, multiple channel sensors, and directional delivery of energy.

Plasmonic waveguide with folded stubs for highly confined terahertz propagation and concentration

We proposed a novel planar terahertz (THz) plasmonic waveguide with folded stub arrays to achieve excellent terahertz propagation performance with tight field confinement and compact size based on the concept of spoof surface plasmon polaritons (spoof SPPs). It is found that the waveguide propagation characteristics can be directly manipulated by increasing the length of the folded stubs without increasing its lateral dimension, which exhibits much lower asymptotic frequency of the dispersion relation and even tighter terahertz field confinement than conventional plasmonic waveguides with rectangular stub arrays. Based on this waveguiding scheme, a terahertz concentrator with gradual step-length folded stubs is proposed to achieve high terahertz field enhancement, and an enhancement factor greater than 20 is demonstrated. This work offers a new perspective on very confined terahertz propagation and concentration, which may have promising potential applications in various integrated terahertz plasmonic circuits and devices, terahertz sensing and terahertz nonlinear optics.

Synthesis of Sparse Arrays With Frequency-Invariant-Focused Beam Patterns Under Accurate Sidelobe Control by Iterative Second-Order Cone Programming

It is shown in this communication that the problem of synthesizing a frequency-invariant (FI) beam pattern with as few elements as possible can be transformed into a sequence of weighted I1 optimizations under multiple convex constraints. The objective of the weighted I1 optimization is to minimize the number of radiating elements. For the filter-and-sum beamforming structure, this is equivalent to minimizing the number of filters, each with a set of optimized coefficients. The multiple constraints are adopted to individually control the mainlobe and sidelobe pattern characteristics, so as to preserve the FI property in the mainlobe region while satisfying a given upper bound in the sidelobe region. The WNG constraint can also be incorporated into the proposed method to enhance the synthesis robustness. This method can be easily implemented by iterative second-order cone programming (SOCP), and only few iterations are required to reach the convergence. A set of examples for the synthesis of FI patterns with uniform sidelobe level (SLL) or multiple nulls, scannable FI patterns, and the synthesis of FI pattern for an arc array with directive elements, is presented to validate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method. The element saving is about 23.3%-50% for the test cases.

Graphene-based hybrid plasmonic waveguide for highly efficient broadband mid-infrared propagation and modulation

In this paper, a graphene-based hybrid plasmonic waveguide is proposed for highly efficient broadband surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagation and modulation at mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectrum. The hybrid plasmonic waveguide is composed of a monolayer graphene sheet in the center, a polysilicon gating layer, and two inner dielectric buffer layers and two outer parabolic-ridged silicon substrates symmetrically placed on both sides of the graphene. Owing to the unique parabolic-ridged waveguide structure, the light-graphene interaction and subwavelength SPPs confinement of the fundamental SPP mode for the hybrid waveguide can be significantly increased. Under the graphene chemical potential of 1.0 eV, the proposed waveguide can achieve outstanding SPP propagation performance with long propagation length of 12.1-16.7 μm and small normalized mode area of ~10-4 in the frequency range of 10-20 THz, exhibiting more than one order smaller in the normalized mode area while remaining the propagation length almost the same level with respect to the hybrid plasmonic waveguide without parabolic ridges. By tuning the graphene chemical potential from 0.1 to 1.0 eV, we demonstrate the waveguide has a modulation depth greater than 51% for the frequency ranging from 10 to 20 THz and reaches a maximum of nearly 100% at the frequency higher than 18 THz. Benefitting from the excellent broadband mid-IR propagation and modulation performance, the graphene-based hybrid plasmonic waveguide may open up a new way for various mid-IR waveguides, modulators, interconnects and optoelectronic devices.

Broadband terahertz reflector based on dielectric metamaterials

An isotropic reflector with near-unity reflectivity is shown based on the three-dimensional monolayer microparticles consisting of ceramic cube arrays. Numerical results show that a broad reflective band with high performance can be excited in an array of dielectric cubes. Meanwhile, from the calculated data, it is observed that the designed reflector is independent of the incidence angle for the transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarizations. In principle, high reflectivity can be realized at arbitrary wavelengths of interest where only a single dielectric layer is required. This work may provide a convenient route to design adaptive metamaterials.