Paper detail

Effects of nonlocal plasmons in gapped graphene micro-ribbon array and 2DEG on near-field electromagnetic response in the deep-subwavelength regime

A self-consistent theory involving Maxwell equations and a density-matrix linear-response theory is solved for an electromagnetically-coupled doped graphene micro-ribbon array and a quantum-well electron gas sitting at an interface between a half-space of air and another half-space of a doped semiconductor substrate which supports a surface-plasmon mode in our system. The coupling between a spatially-modulated total electromagnetic field and the electron dynamics in a Dirac-cone of a graphene ribbon, as well as the coupling of the far-field specular and near-field higher-order diffraction modes, are included in the derived electron optical-response function. Full analytical expressions are obtained with non-locality for the optical-response functions of a two-dimensional electron gas and a graphene layer with an induced bandgap, and are employed in our numerical calculations beyond the long-wavelength limit (Drude model). Both the near-field transmissivity and reflectivity spectra, as well as their dependence on different configurations of our system and on the array period, ribbon width, graphene chemical potential of quantum-well electron gas and bandgap in graphene, are studied. Moreover, the transmitted E-field intensity distribution is calculated to demonstrate its connection to the mixing of specular and diffraction modes of the total electromagnetic field. An externally-tunable electromagnetic coupling among the surface, conventional electron-gas and massless graphene intraband plasmon excitations is discovered and explained. Furthermore, a comparison is made between the dependence of the graphene-plasmon energy on the ribbon width and chemical potential in this paper and the recent experimental observation given by Ju, et al., [Nature Nanotechnology, 6, 630 (2011)] for a graphene micro-ribbon array in the terahertz-frequency range.