Transverse-electric surface plasmon polaritons in periodically modulated graphene

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to excite and tune transverse-electric surface plasmon polaritons in graphene using a one-dimensional grating, enhancing their optical signatures for potential experimental observation.

Contribution

Introducing a graphene grating to enable resonant excitation and tuning of TE surface plasmon polaritons, which are otherwise difficult to excite.

Findings

Periodic modulations increase transmission peaks.

Graphene grating enables TE mode excitation.

Turbostratic graphene enhances plasmonic effects.

Abstract

Transverse-electric (TE) surface plasmon polaritons are unique eigenmodes of a homogeneous graphene layer that are tunable with the chemical potential and temperature. However, as their dispersion curve spectrally lies just below the light line, they cannot be resonantly excited by an externally incident wave. Here, we propose a way of exciting the TE modes and tuning their peaks in the transmission by introducing a one-dimensional graphene grating. Using the scattering-matrix formalism, we show that periodic modulations of graphene make the transmission more pronounced, potentially allowing for experimental observation of the TE modes. Furthermore, we propose the use of turbostratic graphene to enhance the role of the surface plasmon polaritons in optical spectra.