Electrically tunable graphene anti-dot array terahertz plasmonic crystals exhibiting multi-band resonances

Abstract

Graphene-based plasmonic structures feature large tunability, high spatial confinement, and potentially low loss, and are therefore an emerging technology for unconventional manipulation of light. In this paper, we demonstrate electrically tunable terahertz plasmonic crystals consisting of square-lattice graphene periodic anti-dot arrays on a SiO2/Si substrate. Transmission spectroscopy reveals multiple distinct resonances arising from excitations of graphene surface-plasmon–polariton (SPP) modes on different branches of the SPP dispersion curves inherent to the periodic structures. The resonance frequencies are readily tuned electrostatically with the Si back-gate and exhibit the dependency on the carrier density unique to SPP in graphene. Simulations show excellent agreement with the experiments and further illustrate the symmetry-based selection rule for the excited graphene SPP modes. Such graphene plasmonic crystals may lead to a broad range of applications including plasmonic waveguide and transformation optics. Exploiting higher-order graphene SPP modes is an effective way to further facilitate field localization and enhancement.