Optically controllable coupling between edge and topological waveguide modes of certain graphene metasurfaces

Abstract

In this paper, optically controllable and topologically protected plasmon transport is implemented via a topological nanohole plasmonic waveguide coupled to a standard edge mode of a graphene metasurface. By introducing nanoholes with different sizes in the unit cell, one breaks the spatial-inversion symmetry of a graphene metasurface in which the topological waveguide is constructed, leading to the emergence of topologically protected modes located in a nontrivial band-gap. Based on the strong Kerr effect and tunable optical properties of graphene, the coupling between the edge and topological interface modes can be efficiently controlled by optical means provided by an optical pump beam injected in a bulk mode. In particular, by tuning the power inserted in the bulk mode, one can control the difference between the wave-vectors of the topological and edge modes and consequently the optical power coupled in the topological mode. Our results show that when the pump power approaches a specific value, the edge and topological modes become phase-matched and the topological waveguide mode can be efficiently excited. Finally, we demonstrated that the optical coupling is strongly dependent on the group-velocity of the pump mode, a device feature that can be important in practical applications.