Abstract
The ability to tailor the energy distribution of plasmons at the nanoscale has many applications in nanophotonics, such as designing plasmon lasers, spasers, and quantum emitters. To this end, we analytically study the energy distribution and the proper field quantization of 2D plasmons with specific examples for graphene plasmons. We find that the portion of the plasmon energy contained inside graphene (energy confinement factor) can exceed 50%, despite graphene being infinitely thin. In fact, this very high energy confinement can make it challenging to tailor the energy distribution of graphene plasmons just by modifying the surrounding dielectric environment or the geometry, such as changing the separation distance between two coupled graphene layers. However, by adopting concepts of parity-time symmetry breaking, we show that tuning the loss in one of the two coupled graphene layers can simultaneously tailor the energy confinement factor and propagation characteristics, causing the phenomenon of loss-induced plasmonic transparency.
Highlights
10 October 2016To this end, we the work, journal citation and DOI
Quantifying the energy of electromagnetic fields is an inseparable part of our understanding of electromagnetism, from Poynting’s work in 1884 [1] to Brillouin’s discussions on the electromagnetic energy in dispersive and lossy media [2,3,4]
We provided a full analytical description of the energy distribution and energy confinement factor, which is applicable to other photonic systems involving losses
Summary
To this end, we the work, journal citation and DOI. We find that the portion of the plasmon energy contained inside graphene (energy confinement factor) can exceed 50%, despite graphene being infinitely thin This very high energy confinement can make it challenging to tailor the energy distribution of graphene plasmons just by modifying the surrounding dielectric environment or the geometry, such as changing the separation distance between two coupled graphene layers. By adopting concepts of parity-time symmetry breaking, we show that tuning the loss in one of the two coupled graphene layers can simultaneously tailor the energy confinement factor and propagation characteristics, causing the phenomenon of loss-induced plasmonic transparency
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