Excitation of Plasmonic Waves in Graphene by Guided-Mode Resonances

Abstract

We propose an active plasmonic device based on graphene. Highly confined plasmonic waves in monolayer graphene are efficiently excited using an etched diffractive grating on silicon. The guided-wave resonance of the combined structure creates a sharp notch on the normal-incidence transmission spectra, as the incident optical wave couples to the graphene plasmonic wave. This structure can be used as a highly tunable optical filter or a broad-band modulator because the resonant wavelength can be quickly tuned over a wide wavelength range by a small change in the Fermi energy level of the graphene. In this paper, we analyze the performance of this device with finite-difference time-domain simulations. We compare the proposed structure with recently demonstrated graphene nanoribbons based on bound plasmonic oscillations.