Graphene intracavity spaser absorption spectroscopy

Abstract

We propose an intracavity plasmon absorption spectroscopy method based on graphene active plasmonics. It is shown that the plasmonic cavity contribution to the sensitivity is proportional to the quality factor Q of the graphene plasmonic cavity and reaches two orders of magnitude. The addition of gain medium into the cavity increases the sensitivity of method. Maximum sensitivity is reached in the vicinity of the plasmon generation threshold. The gain contribution to the sensitivity is proportional to Q1/2. The giant amplification of sensitivity in the graphene plasmon generator is associated with a huge path length, limited only by the decoherence processes. An analytical estimation of the sensitivity to loss caused by analyzed particles (molecules, nanoparticles, etc.) normalized by the single pass plasmon scheme is derived. Usage of graphene nanoflakes as plasmonic cavity allows a high spatial resolution to be reached, in addition to high sensitivity.