Optical bistability induced by nonlinear surface plasmon polaritons in graphene in terahertz regime

We demonstrate optical bistability in a prism-air-graphene-dielectric structure. Under a moderate electric field in the terahertz frequency regime, the third order nonlinear optical conductivity is comparable to the linear conductivity. The nonlinear conductivity enhances the energy of surface plasm...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics letters 2015-11, Vol.107 (20)
Main Authors: Sanderson, Matthew, Ang, Yee Sin, Gong, Sen, Zhao, Tao, Hu, Min, Zhong, Renbin, Chen, Xiaoxing, Zhang, Ping, Zhang, Chao, Liu, Shenggang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied physics
Dependence
Graphene
Optical bistability
Polaritons
Reflectance
Terahertz frequencies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We demonstrate optical bistability in a prism-air-graphene-dielectric structure. Under a moderate electric field in the terahertz frequency regime, the third order nonlinear optical conductivity is comparable to the linear conductivity. The nonlinear conductivity enhances the energy of surface plasmon polaritons. Both the energy and frequency of the surface plasmon polaritons depend on the strength of the nonlinear current in the graphene layer. When considering excitation in the Kretschmann configuration, the reflectance as a function of frequency exhibits bistability. The origin of the bistability is the field dependence of the plasmon mode. We have determined the parameter regime for the occurrence of bistability in this structure.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4936232