Midinfrared Plasmonic Valleytronics in Metagate-Tuned Graphene

Minwoo Jung, Zhiyuan Fan, and Gennady Shvets

Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 086807 – Published 24 August 2018

Abstract

A valley plasmonic crystal for graphene surface plasmons is proposed. We demonstrate that a designer metagate, placed within a few nanometers of graphene, can be used to impose a periodic Fermi energy landscape on graphene. For specific metagate geometries and bias voltages, the combined metagate-graphene structure is shown to produce complete propagation band gaps for the plasmons, and to impart them with nontrivial valley-linked topological properties. Sharply curved domain walls between differently patterned metagates are shown to guide highly localized plasmons without any reflections owing to suppressed intervalley scattering. Our approach paves the way for nonmagnetic and dynamically reconfigurable topological nanophotonic devices.

Received 30 March 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.086807

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Metamaterials Surface plasmons Topological materials Valleytronics

Graphene

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Minwoo Jung^1,*, Zhiyuan Fan², and Gennady Shvets^2,†

¹Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
²School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA