Electrical plasmon detection in graphene waveguides

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple all-electrical detection method for graphene plasmons using the non-linear hydrodynamic response, enabling integration of plasmonic waveguides into electronic circuits.

Contribution

The authors propose a novel device architecture that detects plasmons electrically via non-linear hydrodynamic effects in graphene at room temperature.

Findings

Analytical calculation of dc voltage from plasmon propagation

Device architecture enables all-electrical detection of plasmons

Potential for integration into electronic circuits

Abstract

We present a simple device architecture that allows all-electrical detection of plasmons in a graphene waveguide. The key principle of our electrical plasmon detection scheme is the non-linear nature of the hydrodynamic equations of motion that describe transport in graphene at room temperature and in a wide range of carrier densities. These non-linearities yield a dc voltage in response to the oscillating field of a propagating plasmon. For illustrative purposes, we calculate the dc voltage arising from the propagation of the lowest-energy modes in a fully analytical fashion. Our device architecture for all-electrical plasmon detection paves the way for the integration of graphene plasmonic waveguides in electronic circuits.