In order to enable optical systems to operate with a high degree of compactness and reliability it is necessary to combine large number of optical functions in small monolithic structures. A development, somewhat reminiscent of that that took place in Integrated Electronics, is now beginning to take place in optics. The initial challenge in this emerging field, known appropriately as "Integrated Optics", is to demonstrate the possibility of performing basic optical functions such as light generation, coupling, modulation, and guiding in Integrated Optical configurations. The talk will review the main theoretical and experimental developments to date in Integrated Optics. Specific topics to be discussed include: Material considerations, guiding mechanisms, modulation, coupling and mode losses. The fabrication and applications of periodic thin film structures will be discussed.

Integrated optics

We demonstrate that a broadband terahertz absorber with near-unity absorption can be realized using a net-shaped periodically sinusoidally-patterned graphene sheet, placed on a dielectric spacer supported on a metallic reflecting plate. Because of the gradient width modulation of the unit graphene sheet, continuous plasmon resonances can be excited, and therefore broadband terahertz absorption can be achieved. The results show that the absorber’s normalized bandwidth of 90% terahertz absorbance is over 65% under normal incidence for both TE and TM polarizations when the graphene chemical potential is set as 0.7 eV. And the broadband absorption is insensitive to the incident angles and the polarizations. The peak absorbance remains more than 70% over a wide range of the incident angles up to 60° for both polarizations. Furthermore, this absorber also has the advantage of flexible tunability via electrostatic doping of graphene sheet, which peak absorbance can be continuously tuned from 14% to 100% by controlling the chemical potential from 0 eV to 0.8 eV. The design scheme is scalable to develop various graphene-based tunable broadband absorbers at other terahertz, infrared, and visible frequencies, which may have promising applications in sensing, detecting, and optoelectronic devices.

Broadband absorber with periodically sinusoidally-patterned graphene layer in terahertz range.

We show numerically that both coherent perfect absorption and transparency can be realized in a monolayer graphene. The graphene film, doped and patterned with a periodical array of holes, can support plasmonic resonances in the Mid-infrared range. Under the illumination of two counter-propagating coherent optical beams, resonant optical absorption may be tuned continuously from 99.93% to less than 0.01% by controlling their relative phase which gives a modulation contrast of 40 dB (about 30 dB for transmission). The phenomenon provides a versatile platform for manipulating the interaction between light and graphene and may serve applications in optical modulators, transducers, sensors and coherent detectors.

Coherent perfect absorption and transparency in a nanostructured graphene film

Two-dimensional graphene monolayers and bilayers exhibit fascinating electrical transport behaviors. Using infrared spectroscopy, we find that they also have strong interband transitions and that their optical transitions can be substantially modified through electrical gating, much like electrical transport in field-effect transistors. This gate dependence of interband transitions adds a valuable dimension for optically probing graphene band structure. For a graphene monolayer, it yields directly the linear band dispersion of Dirac fermions, whereas in a bilayer, it reveals a dominating van Hove singularity arising from interlayer coupling. The strong and layer-dependent optical transitions of graphene and the tunability by simple electrical gating hold promise for new applications in infrared optics and optoelectronics.

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Gate-Variable Optical Transitions in Graphene

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been intensively studied and widely employed for light trapping and absorption enhancement. In the mid-infrared and terahertz (THz) regime, graphene supports the tunable SPR via manipulating its Fermi energy and enhances light-matter interaction at the selective wavelength. In this work, periodic arrays of graphene rings are proposed to introduce tunable light trapping with good angle polarization tolerance and enhance the absorption in the light-absorbing materials nearby to more than one order. Moreover, the design principle here could be set as a template to achieve multi-band plasmonic absorption enhancement by introducing more graphene concentric rings into each unit cell. This work not only opens up new ways of employing graphene SPR, but also leads to practical applications in high-performance simultaneous multi-color photodetection with high efficiency and tunable spectral selectivity.

Tunable light trapping and absorption enhancement with graphene ring arrays

Dielectric loaded graphene plasmon waveguide (DLGPW) is proposed and investigated. An analytical model based on effective-index method is presented and verified by the finite element method simulations. The mode effective index, propagation loss, cutoff wavelength of higher order modes and single-mode operation region were derived at mid-infrared spectral region. By changing Fermi energy level, the propagation properties of fundamental mode could be tuned flexibly. The structure of the DLGPW is simple and easy for fabrication. It provided a new freedom to manipulate the graphene surface plasmons, which may led to new applications in actively tunable integrated optical devices.

Dielectric loaded graphene plasmon waveguide.

Subwavelength perfect optical absorption structures based on monolayer-graphene are analyzed and demonstrated experimentally. The perfect absorption mechanism is a result of critical coupling relating to a guided mode resonance of a low index two-dimensional periodic structure. Peak absorption over 99% at wavelength of 1526.5 nm with full-width at half maximum (FWHM) about 18 nm is demonstrated from a fabricated structure with period of 1230 nm, and the measured results agree well with the simulation results. In addition, the influence of geometrical parameters of the structure and the angular response for oblique incidence are analyzed in detail in the simulation. The demonstrated absorption structure in the presented work has great potential in the design of advanced photo-detectors and modulators.

Monolayer-graphene-based perfect absorption structures in the near infrared

We theoretically demonstrate that an electrically tunable polarizer can be obtained using a periodic array of graphene ribbons supported on a dielectric film on top of a thick piece of metal. The polarizing mechanism originates from anisotropic absorption of the graphene ribbons. The results of fullwave numerical simulations reveal that absorption of 0.0075 for one polarization and 0.9986 for another polarization can be obtained at normal incidence in the THz range. For circular incidence polarization, the corresponding polarizing extinction ratio increases to 65 dB.

Electrically tunable polarizer based on anisotropic absorption of graphene ribbons

We propose and numerically analyze a mid-infrared electrically controllable plasmonic waveguide directional coupler that is composed of two parallel identical straight dielectric loaded graphene plasmonic waveguide and S-shaped waveguide bends. By varying the Fermi energy level of the graphene sheet, the maximum power coupled from the input waveguide to the cross-waveguide and the corresponding coupling length could be effectively tuned. Under different Fermi energy level, this directional coupler could serve as an electrically controlled optical switch or a 3-dB splitter around the wavelength of 10.5 μm. Moreover, the size of the entire device is really in sub-wavelength scale making it very facilitative for high density integration.

Toward integrated electrically controllable directional coupling based on dielectric loaded graphene plasmonic waveguide

We theoretically demonstrate a polarizer with an electrically controllable polarizing direction in the far infrared range using two orthogonal periodic arrays of graphene ribbons, which have different widths and are supported on a dielectric film placed on a thick piece of metal. The operation mechanism originates from the polarization-dependent resonant absorption of the two orthogonal graphene ribbons, which can be respectively controlled with different external bias voltages. The operation wavelength can be expanded to terahertz (THz) radiation.

Z. H. Zhu

Papers

Dielectric loaded graphene plasmon waveguide.

Monolayer-graphene-based perfect absorption structures in the near infrared

Electrically tunable polarizer based on anisotropic absorption of graphene ribbons

Toward integrated electrically controllable directional coupling based on dielectric loaded graphene plasmonic waveguide

Electrically controlling the polarizing direction of a graphene polarizer