Dynamical Tuning of Energy Transfer Efficiency on a Graphene Monolayer

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how a graphene monolayer can be used to control and enhance energy transfer and spontaneous emission rates of nearby quantum systems, with potential applications in nanophotonics.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of energy transfer and emission rates near graphene, highlighting the tunability via chemical potential and the dominance of surface plasmon modes.

Findings

Spontaneous emission rate is enhanced by several orders of magnitude near graphene.

Energy transfer rate between quantum systems is significantly increased close to graphene.

Surface plasmon modes enable long-range energy transfer along the graphene monolayer.

Abstract

We present in this contribution a theoretical investigation of the spontaneous emission and energy transfer rates between quantum systems placed above a monolayer of conducting graphene. The conditions for strong and weak coupling between a quantum system and the surface plasmon-polariton of graphene are determined and, subsequently, we focus exclusively on the weak coupling regime. We then calculate the dispersion relation of the surface plasmon mode on graphene and, by varying the chemical potential, show a good control of its resonance frequency. Using a Green's tensor formalism, we calculate the spontaneous emission and energy transfer rates of quantum systems placed near the graphene monolayer. The spontaneous emission rate of a single quantum system is enhanced by several orders of magnitude close to the graphene monolayer and we show that this enhancement is due almost exclusively to excitation of the surface plasmon mode. When considering the energy transfer rate between two quantum systems, we find a similar enhancement of several orders of magnitude close to the graphene monolayer. The direct interaction between the donor and acceptor dominates when they are close to each other, but is modified from its free-space behavior due to the presence of the graphene monolayer. As the donor-acceptor separation is increased, their direct interaction is overshadowed by the interaction via the surface plasmon mode. Due to the large propagation length of surface plasmon mode on graphene -- hundreds of nanometers -- this enhancement of the energy transfer rate holds over large donor-acceptor separations along the graphene monolayer.