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Magnons and plasmons are two very different types of collective modes, acting on the spin and charge degrees of freedom, respectively. At first sight, the formation of hybrid plasmon-magnon polaritons in heterostructures of plasmonic and magnetic systems would face two challenges, the small mutual interaction, via Zeeman coupling of the electromagnetic field of the plasmon with the spins, and the energy mismatch, as in most systems plasmons have energies in the eV range, orders of magnitude larger than magnons. Here we show that graphene plasmons form polaritons with the magnons of two-dimensional ferrromagnetic insulators, placed up to to half a micron apart, with Rabi couplings in the range of 100 GHz (dramatically larger than cavity QED magnonics). This strong coupling is facilitated both by the small energy of graphene plasmons and the cooperative super-radiant nature of the plasmon-magnon coupling afforded by phase matching. We show that the Rabi coupling can be modulated both electrically and mechanically and we propose a attenuated total internal reflection experiment to implement ferromagnetic resonance experiments on 2D ferromagnets driven by plasmon excitation., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, appendix

In this paper we study the formation of topological Tamm states at the interface between a semi-infinite one-dimensional photonic-crystal and a metal. We show that when the system is topologically non-trivial there is a single Tamm state in each of the band-gaps, whereas if it is topologically trivial the band-gaps host no Tamm states. We connect the disappearance of the Tamm states with a topological transition from a topologically non-trivial system to a topologically trivial one. This topological transition is driven by the modification of the dielectric functions in the unit cell. Our interpretation is further supported by an exact mapping between the solutions of Maxwell's equations and the existence of a tight-binding representation of those solutions. We show that the tight-binding representation of the 1D photonic crystal, based on Maxwell's equations, corresponds to a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-type model (SSH-model) for each set of pairs of bands. Expanding this representation near the band edge we show that the system can be described by a Dirac-like Hamiltonian. It allows one to characterize the topology associated with the solution of Maxwell's equations via the winding number. In addition, for the infinite system, we provide an analytical expression for the photonic bands from which the band-gaps can be computed., Comment: 13 pages

We consider a hybrid structure formed by graphene and an insulating antiferromagnet, separated by a dielectric of thickness up to $d\simeq 500 \,nm$. When uncoupled, both graphene and the antiferromagnetic surface host their own polariton modes coupling the electromagnetic field with plasmons in the case of graphene, and with magnons in the case of the antiferromagnet. We show that the hybrid structure can host two new types of hybrid polariton modes. First, a surface magnon-plasmon polariton whose dispersion is radically changed by the carrier density of the graphene layer, including a change of sign in the group velocity. Second, a surface plasmon-magnon polariton formed as a linear superposition of graphene surface plasmon and the antiferromagnetic bare magnon. This polariton has a dispersion with two branches, formed by the anticrossing between the dispersive surface plasmon and the magnon. We discuss the potential these new modes have for combining photons, magnons, and plasmons to reach new functionalities., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures

We consider a graphene sheet encapsulated in a two-dimensional metallic grating and a substrate ($\mathrm{Al_{2}O_{3}}$) and subjected to an external magnetic field (in Faraday configuration). The grating consists of a thin perfectly conducting metal film perforated with a 2D periodic array of square holes. According to our calculations, significant changes in the spectra of the Faraday rotation angle of the transmitted wave and of the magnetic circular dichroism should be expected in this situation compared to bare graphene. We explain this enhancement by the excitation of graphene magnetoplasmons that accompanies the transmission of the electromagnetic wave through the structure. The results can be interesting for applications in THz photonics, such as switchable rotating polarizer and optical isolator., Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B

We discuss the renormalization of the polarizability of a nanoparticle in the presence of either (i) a continuous graphene sheet or (ii) a plasmonic graphene grating, taking into account retardation effects. Our analysis demonstrates that the excitation of surface plasmon-polaritons in graphene produces a large enhancement of the real and imaginary parts of the renormalized polarizability. We show that the imaginary part can be changed by a factor of up to 100 relatively to its value in the absence of graphene. We also show that the resonance in the case of the grating is narrower than in the continuous sheet. In the case of the grating it is shown that the resonance can be tuned by changing the grating geometric parameters., Comment: 32 pages

The ability to effectively guide electromagnetic radiation below the diffraction limit is of the utmost importance in the prospect of all-optical plasmonic circuitry. Here, we propose an alternative solution to conventional metal-based plasmonics by exploiting the deep subwavelength confinement and tunability of graphene plasmons guided along the apex of a graphene-covered dielectric wedge or groove. In particular, we present a quasi-analytic model to describe the plasmonic eigenmodes in such a system, including the complete determination of their spectrum and corresponding induced potential and electric field distributions. We have found that the dispersion of wedge/groove graphene plasmons follows the same functional dependence as their flat-graphene plasmons counterparts, but now scaled by a (purely) geometric factor in which all the information about the system's geometry is contained. We believe our results pave the way for the development of novel custom-tailored photonic devices for subwavelength waveguiding and localization of light based on recently discovered 2D materials., Comment: Published in ACS Photonics

The propagation of a surface plasmon-polariton along a stack of doped graphene sheets is considered. This auxiliary problem is used to discuss: (i) the scattering of such a mode at an interface between the stack and the vacuum; (ii) the scattering at an interface where there is a sudden change of the electronic doping. The formalism is then extended to the {\it barrier problem}. In this system rich physics is found for the plasmonic mode, showing: total reflection, total transmission, Fabry-P\'erot oscillations, and coupling to photonic modes., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

We study the interaction between polarized terahertz (THz) radiation and micro-structured large-area graphene in transmission geometry. In order to efficiently couple the radiation into the two-dimensional material, a lateral periodic patterning of a closed graphene sheet by intercalation doping into stripes is chosen, yielding unequal transmittance of the radiation polarized parallel and perpendicular to the stripes. Indeed, a polarization contrast up to 20% is observed. The effect even increases up to 50% when removing graphene stripes in analogy to a wire grid polarizer. The polarization dependence is analyzed in a large frequency range from < 80 GHz to 3 THz, including the plasmon-polariton resonance. The results are in excellent agreement with theoretical calculations based on the electronic energy spectrum of graphene and the electrodynamics of the patterned structure.

We study the electromagnetic properties of a metamaterial consisting of polarizable (nano)particles and a single graphene sheet placed at the interface between two dielectrics. We show that the particle's polarizability is renormalized because of the electromagnetic coupling to surface plasmons supported by graphene, which results in a dispersive behavior, different for the polarizability components corresponding to the induced dipole moment, parallel and perpendicular to the graphene sheet. In particular, this effect is predicted to take place for a metallic particle whose bare polarizability in the terahertz (THz) region is practically equal to the cube of its radius (times $4\pi \varepsilon_0$). This opens the possibility to excite surface plasmons in graphene and enhance its absorption in the THz range by simply using a monolayer of metallic particles randomly deposited on top of it, as we show by explicit calculations., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

We use an exact solution of the relaxation-time Boltzmann equation in a uniform AC electric field to describe the nonlinear optical response of graphene in the terahertz (THz). The cases of monolayer, bilayer and ABA-stacked trilayer graphene are considered, and the monolayer species is shown to be the most appropriate one to exploit the nonlinear free electron response. We find that a single layer of monolayer graphene shows an optical bistability in the THz range, within the electromagnetic power range attainable in practice. The current associated with the third harmonic generation is also computed., Comment: New version: Refs. added; some changes in the text and in the figures

We present a theoretical description of Bogolyubov-type excitations of exciton-polariton Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in semiconductor microcavities. For a typical two dimensional (2D) BEC we focus on two limiting cases, the weak- and strong-coupling regimes, where a perturbation theory and the Thomas-Fermi approximation, respectively, are valid. We calculate integrated scattering intensity spectra for probing the collective excitations of the condensate in both considered limits. Moreover, in relation to recent experiments on optical modulation allowing localization of condensates in a trap with well controlled shape and dimensions, we study the quasi-one dimensional (1D) motion of the BEC in microwires and report the corresponding Bogolyubov's excitation spectrum. We show that in 1D case the characteristic polariton-polariton interaction constant is expressed as $g_{1}=3\lambda \mathcal{N}/(2L_{y})$ ($\lambda $ is the 2D polariton-polaritons interaction parameter in the cavity, $\mathcal{N}$ the number of the particles, and $L_{y}$ the wirecavity width). We reveal some interesting features for 2D and 1D Bogolyubov spectra for both repulsive $(\lambda >0)$ and attractive $(\lambda <0)$ interaction., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

It is shown that quantitative information on spatial correlations in a system of polarizable particles can be extracted directly from its experimentally measurable optical spectra. For a collection of metallic nanoparticles (NPs), it is demonstrated that the degree of short-range correlation in NP's positions can be evaluated by an appropriate numerical analysis of the extinction spectrum in the surface plasmon resonance region, given the polarizability of an individual NP. The spectrum analysis consists in the evaluation of a single number, which is the derivative of the ensemble response function in the vanishing polarizability limit, to be compared to pre-calculated values for a model NP system with given density and correlation parameters., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures

We discuss the properties of surface plasmons-polaritons in graphene and describe three possible ways of coupling electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz (THz) spectral range to this type of surface waves. (i) the attenuated total reflection (ATR) method using a prism in the Otto configuration, (ii) graphene micro-ribbon arrays or monolayers with modulated conductivity, (iii) a metal stripe on top of the graphene layer, and (iv) graphene-based gratings. The text provides a number of original results along with their detailed derivation and discussion., Comment: 75 pages

We describe light scattering from a graphene sheet having a modulated optical conductivity. We show that such modulation enables the excitation of surface plasmon-polaritons by an electromagnetic wave impinging at normal incidence. The resulting surface plasmon-polaritons are responsible for a substantial increase of electromagnetic radiation absorption by the graphene sheet. The origin of the modulation can be due either to a periodic strain field or to adatoms (or absorbed molecules) with a modulated adsorption profile., Comment: http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-8984/24/24/245303

The optical conductivity of graphene nanoribbons is analytical and exactly derived. It is shown that the absence of translation invariance along the transverse direction allows considerable intra-band absorption in a narrow frequency window that varies with the ribbon width, and lies in the THz range domain for ribbons 10-100nm wide. In this spectral region the absorption anisotropy can be as high as two orders of magnitude, which renders the medium strongly dichroic, and allows for a very high degree of polarization (up to ~85) with just a single layer of graphene. The effect is resilient to level broadening of the ribbon spectrum potentially induced by disorder. Using a cavity for impedance enhancement, or a stack of few layer nanoribbons, these values can reach almost 100%. This opens a potential prospect of employing graphene ribbon structures as efficient polarizers in the far IR and THz frequencies., Comment: Revised version. 10 pages, 7 figures

Surface plasmon-polaritons in a multilayer structure consisting of a metallic film and one or more layers of nanocrystal (NC) quantum dots (QDs) are studied. It is shown that there is resonance coupling between the plasmon-polaritons propagating along the metal/NC-layer interface and excitons confined in the dots, which makes a considerable effect on the optical properties of the structure unless the dispersion of the QD size is too large. This coupling can be explored in order to selectively excite QDs of different size by using an attenuated total reflection (ATR) structure. It opens the possibility of control of the relative intensity of light of different color, emitted by the QDs of different size.

It is shown that one can explore the optical conductivity of graphene, together with the ability of controlling its electronic density by an applied gate voltage, in order to achieve resonant coupling between an external electromagnetic radiation and surface plasmon-polaritons in the graphene layer. This opens the possibility of electrical control of the intensity of light reflected inside a prism placed on top of the graphene layer, by switching between the regimes of total reflection and total absorption. The predicted effect can be used to build graphene-based opto-electronic switches., Comment: 5 pages

We study the electronic relaxation in a quantum dot within the polaron approach, by focusing on the {\it reversible} anharmonic decay of longitudinal optical (LO) phonons forming the polaron into longitudinal acoustic (LA) phonons. The coherent coupling between the LO and LA phonons is treated within a mean-field approach. We derive a temperature-dependent inter-level coupling parameter, related to the Gr\"uneisen parameter and the thermal expansion coefficient, that characterizes an effective decay channel for the electronic (or excitonic) states. Within this theory, we obtain a characteristic anharmonic decay time of 1ns, 2-3 orders of magnitude longer than previous predictions based on the Fermi's Golden Rule. We suggest that coherent relaxation due to carrier-carrier interaction is an efficient alternative to the (too slow) polaron decay., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure

Multiphonon processes in a model quantum dot (QD) containing two electronic states and several optical phonon modes are considered taking into account both intra- and inter-level terms. The Hamiltonian is exactly diagonalized including a finite number of multi-phonon processes, large enough as to guarantee that the result can be considered exact in the physically important region of energies. The physical properties are studied by calculating the electronic Green's function and the QD dielectric function. When both the intra- and inter-level interactions are included, the calculated spectra allow for explanation of several previously published experimental results obtained for spherical and self-assembled QDs, such as enhanced 2LO phonon replica in absorption spectra and up-converted photoluminescence. An explicit calculation of the spectral line shape due to intra-level interaction with a continuum of acoustic phonons is presented, where the multi-phonon processes also are shown to be important. It is pointed out that such an interaction, under certain conditions, can lead to relaxation in the otherwise stationary polaron system., Comment: 23 pages, 10 eps figures, revtex4