Multi-plasmon absorption in graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that graphene exhibits strong multi-plasmon absorption, enabling applications like low-threshold saturable absorbers and plasmon blockade effects, with significant implications for nonlinear optics in the infrared and terahertz ranges.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of multi-plasmon absorption in graphene and predicts novel phenomena such as plasmon blockade and low-threshold saturable absorption.

Findings

Graphene nano-ribbons can act as saturable absorbers in the infrared and terahertz.

Two-plasmon absorption can induce a plasmon blockade effect.

Strong nonlinear optical response due to multi-plasmon processes in graphene.

Abstract

We show that graphene possesses a strong nonlinear optical response in the form of multi-plasmon absorption, with exciting implications in classical and quantum nonlinear optics. Specifically, we predict that graphene nano-ribbons can be used as saturable absorbers with low saturation intensity in the far-infrared and terahertz spectrum. Moreover, we predict that two-plasmon absorption and extreme localization of plasmon fields in graphene nano-disks can lead to a plasmon blockade effect, in which a single quantized plasmon strongly suppresses the possibility of exciting a second plasmon.