Tunable surface waves supported by graphene-covered left-handed material structures

P-polarized surface waves in a slab waveguide with left-handed material for sensing applications

This study examines the analytical and numerical solution of electromagnetic surface waves supported by a resistive metasurface-covered grounded metamaterial structure. To simulate the metamaterial, the Kramers–Kronig relation based on the causality principle is used, while the modeling of the resistive metasurface has been done by implementing the impedance boundary conditions. The analytical expressions for the field phasors of surface waves are developed for the transverse magnetic (TM) polarized mode and transverse electric (TE) polarized mode. The characteristic equations are computed for both modes, and the unknown propagation constant is evaluated numerically in the kernel. After computation, the dispersion curves, electric field profiles, effective mode index (N_{eff}), and phase speeds (v_{p}) are presented for both the TM and TE polarized modes. To study the tunability of surface waves, the influence of the thickness of the metamaterial slab (d), effective permittivity of the metamaterial (varepsilon_{1}), thickness of the resistive metasurface (t), and effective permittivity of the metasurface (varepsilon_{r}) on all the numerical results has been studied. However, the geometrical parameters are found to be more sensitive to the effective mode index (N_{eff}) and phase speed (v_{p}) of the surface waves. The results are consistent with the published results, which reflects the accuracy of the work. It is concluded that the appropriate choice of parameters can be used to achieve surface waves with the desired characteristics in the GHz range. The present work may have potential applications in surface waveguide design, surface wave speed controllers, surface communication devices, and light trapping configurations.

The paper is concerned with the propagation characteristics of TE surface waves in a planer wave-guide structure of a lateral antiferromagnetic -non magnetic superlattices (LANS)film bounded by a nonlinear dielectric cover and a left handed substrate (LHM). In (LHM) substrate both permittivity and magnetic permeability are negative in definite frequency range. We study nonlinear dispersion properties of the TE surface waves and illustrate power flow variation with the wave index when both permittivity and magnetic permeability are negative. We found that surface waves are backward traveling and the wave power variation with the wave index shows bistability behavior.

AbsIracf - Two-dimensional backward-wave meta-material based on evanescent parallel-plate waveguide filled with uniaxial magnetic tilling with negative transversal permeability is investigated experimentally. The prototype comprised a two-dimensional array of the double ring resonators sandwiched between two metallic plates and it was operating in 8 GHz frequency hand. The backward-wave propagation was verified by the measurement of negative lateral displacement of the beam impinging the meta-material slab at several different angles of incidence I. INTRODUCTION A material which supports propagation of the backward waves ('left-handed material' or 'backward-wave material') was predicted theoretically in sixties by Veselago (I) and realized experimentally for the first time by Smith at al. (2) in 2000. The rather simple type of one-dimensional backward-wave meta-material based on an evanescent waveguide loaded with the split ring resonators was presented in (3). Such a waveguide was interpreted as one-dimensional material with both negative permeability and negative permittivity (3). In (4,5), it was shown that the propagation below the cut-off frequency actually occurs due to uniaxial anisotropy of negative permeability of the meta-material based on the split ring resonators. The extension of this basic principle to two dimensions, similarly to the idea introduced in (6), is investigated experimentally in this paper. 11. THEORETICAL RESULTS Let us analyze the structure that comprises a slab of anisotropic uniaxial magnetic materials sandwiched within the two infinite parallel PEC plates (Fig.1). If the optical axis of the uniaxial material is perpendicular to the plates (the transversal direction), it is obvious that this structure is essentially isotropic in two dimensions. Thus, the electromagnetic energy will propagate in any direction parallel to the plates (the longitudinal direction) in the exactly the same way (the propagation for two perpendicular longitudinal directions is sketched in Fig. 5). For any particular longitudinal direction, one may think of this structure as a parallel plate waveguide. In the lossles case, the longitudinal propagation factor of such a waveguide is given by the simple set of equations (4,51: Here, k, stands for longitudinal propagation factor, ko is a free space propagation factor, g is relative permittivity and p,, and pi, stand for relative permeability in transversal and longitudinal directions of the waveguide, respectively. The symbol f stands for a frequency of the signal, whereas Lo and L are the cut-off frequency of an empty parallel-plate waveguide and the parallel-plate waveguide filled with a material, respectively. If the transversal permeability is negative &<0 ) and the longitudinal permeability is positive (ppO), one must choose the negative sign in front of the square root in (I) for frequencies below the cut-off. This yields the peculiar phenomenon of the backward-wave propagation. Hence, the structure actually behaves as two-dimensional backward-wave meta-material provided that the vector of the magnetic field is perpendicular to the walls (TE 01 mode). If one stacks more parallel plate waveguides in the transversal direction, it is possible to manufacture the two-dimensional 'backward-wave' material of arbitrary thickness, as proposed in (6). The backward-wave propagation below the cut-off frequency can he simply explained by two-dimensional transmission line equivalent circuit of the structure (Fig.2). The distributed series impedance (212) is associated with the transversal permeability. The distributed shunt admittance associated with the relative permittivity (Y,) and the admittance associated with the longitudinal permeability (Y,) form the tank circuit. In the case of the uniaxial material with positive permeability, the series admittance will he also positive. Below the cut-off, the tank circuit behaves as an inductance and, for any direction parallel to the plates, the whole structure behaves as a transmission line with the distributed series inductance and the distributed parallel inductance (L-L transmission line), This kind of transmission line does not support the propagating waves. If the transversal

In this paper, a metamaterial antenna based on Split Ring Resonator (SRR) and a Thin Wire (TW) is proposed and studied. The proposed antenna consists of six unit cells and a thin wire of Left Handed Materials (LHM) arranged in 2×3 printed on same side of substrate. The TW stub of the unit cell is used to connect the LHM's to the radiating edge of a microstrip patch antenna. The constitutive parameter of the LHM is retrieve to reveal the left handed region. By using these techniques, the bandwidth of the metamaterial antenna is twice that of the ordinary patch antenna at the same operating frequency.

We present a study of light-induced forces between two coupled plasmonic nano-particles above various slab geometries including a metallic half-space and a 280-nm thick negative index material (NIM) slab waveguide. We investigate optical forces by non-perturbatively calculating the scattered electric field via a Green function technique which includes the particle interactions to all orders. For excitation frequencies near the surface plasmon polariton and slow-light waveguide modes of the metal and NIM, respectively, we find rich light-induced forces and significant dynamical back-action effects. Optical quenching is found to be important in both metal and NIM planar geometries, which reduces the spatial range of the achievable inter-particle forces. However, reducing the loss in the NIM allows radiation to propagate through the slow-light modes more efficiently, thus causing the light-induced forces to be more pronounced between the two particles. To highlight the underlying mechanisms by which the particles couple, we connect our Green function calculations to various familiar quantities in quantum optics.

We experimentally investigated the microwave reflection of the negative permeability material composed of periodical arrays of the copper split-ring resonators (SRRs).The negative dielectric materials are composed of periodical arrays of copper wires and left-handed materials(LHMs) in a planar slab waveguide, and the microwave is incident to the surface in different directions.We also investigated the negative refraction through a prism fabricated from the LHMs.The experimental results show that for the negative permeability materials,there is a reflection peak at the resonance frequencies of the SRRs, and the reflectivity of the negative dielectric material is closed to 0dB.A single smaller reflection peak occurs in the reflected curve of the LHMs,the reflectivity of which increases with the incident direction,that is,the reflection increases.The reflection peak has a shift with respect to the transmission peak. It is demonstrated that negative refractive index of -0.796 occurs in the LHMs at the frequency o 800MHz.

Metasurface (MTS) antennas are based on the transformation of a cylindrical-wavefront surface wave (SW) into a general wavefront leaky wave (LW). The MTS aperture is constituted by a grounded dielectric slab printed with an electrically dense distribution of subwavelength patches realizing space-variable, homogenized tensor impedance boundary conditions (IBCs). One of the challenges in this type of antenna is related to obtaining dual polarization operations by using the same impedance modulation. In this article, we explore and compare three simple approaches to obtain two beams with orthogonal polarizations by feeding two ports. A first known method is based on exciting both a transverse electric (TE) and a transverse magnetic (TM) SW mode on the same modulated impedance. A second method exploits the concept of impedance modulation sharing, according to which two distinct modulations, designed to radiate different polarizations when properly illuminated by distinct offset feeding points, are superimposed on the same aperture. A third method consists in duplexing an outward (radially diverging) and an inward (converging to the center) SW. Simple analytical formulas are presented for the synthesis of the impedance that allows for the control of the inward/outward waves to ensure balanced radiation performances in terms of aperture efficiency for the two polarizations. A comparison in terms of performances between the latter two approaches is presented.

Electromagnetic surface modes present in one dimensional photonic crystals composed of left and right handed materials are determined by using the formalism of equivalent systems. It is found that surface waves in these systems may present notable differences against those modes found in completely dielectric photonic crystals, since they can be present inside the evanescent zone of the system as if they were cast out from the band of interface modes. These modes appear only in periodic systems that include left and right handed materials in the unit cell.

This article is focused on understanding of the effect of a low-pressure argon plasma on split ring resonator (SRR) metamaterial resonance. After an experimental characterization of SRR arrays that denies reaching critical density at 2.45 GHz, we present an alternative SRR, called sparse SRR, tunable in resonance frequency, that admits higher plasma density in its structure. This innovative structure is characterized with plasma to search for left-handed material signature. Several plasma effects such as gradients and sheaths are quantified. It is shown that plasma shifts the SRR resonance to higher frequencies. The amplitude of the resonance shift can not be estimated without taking into account the sheath thickness. Moreover, the plasma gradient causes the appearance of several distinguishable dips of resonances. These different effects are studied with simulations, highlighting the difficulty to create a left-handed material based on plasma-metamaterial.

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are propagating electromagnetic surface waves with local electric field enhancement and nondiffraction limit at optical frequencies. At terahertz (THz) frequencies, a metal line with periodic grooves can mimic the optical SPPs with the same high cut-off response, which is referred to as designer SPPs. Here, by replacing metal grooves with graphene sheets, a novel active metal-graphene hybrid SPP device achieves significant phase modulation. Theoretically, the dispersion curves of THz SPPs are determined by the dimensions and periodicity of the grooves. Changing the chemical potential of graphene sweeps the effective groove depth, which correspondingly shifts the SPP cut-off frequency and modulates the slow-wave phase. A prototype device is fabricated and characterized under varying bias applied for graphene. The experiment demonstrates that the cut-off frequency red shifts from 200 to 177GHz, and the phase variation is as large as 112° at 195GHz under a low bias from -0.5 to 0.5V. Simultaneously, the SPP transmittance is modulated by a factor of more than 3 dB from 140 to 177GHz due to the graphene absorption. The proposed structure reveals a novel approach to study the nonreciprocal and topological SPPs with active modulation in the THz range.

Wireless data rates have doubled every eighteen months for the last three decades. Following this trend, Terabit-per-second links will become a reality within the next five years. In this context, Terahertz (THz) band (0.1-10 THz) communication is envisioned as a key technology of the next decade. Despite major progress towards developing THz sources, compact signal generators above 1 THz able to efficiently work at room temperature are still missing. Recently, the use of hybrid graphene/semiconductor high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMT) has been proposed as a way to generate Surface Plasmon Polariton (SPP) waves at THz frequencies. Compact size, room-temperature operation and tunability of the graphene layer, in addition to possibility for large scale integration, motivate the exploration of this approach. In this paper, a simulation model of hybrid graphene/semiconductor HEMT-based THz sources is developed. More specifically, first, the necessary conditions for the so-called Dyakonov-Shur instability to arise within the HEMT channel are derived, and the impact of imperfect boundary conditions is analyzed. Second, the required conditions for coupling between a confined plasma wave in the HEMT channel and a SPP wave in graphene are derived, by starting from the coupling analysis between two 2DEG. Multi-physics simulation are conducted by integrating the hydrodynamic equations for the description of the HEMT device with Maxwell’s equations for SPP modeling. Extensive results are provided to analyze the impact of different design elements on the THz signal source. This work will guide the experimental fabrication and characterization of the devices.

It is known that $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$-near-zero (ENZ) structures may provide exciting possibilities for light-matter interaction, including the phenomenon of supercoupling, i.e., channeling of wave energy through ultranarrow conduits connecting two waveguides. Here, we extend this concept to the surface waves using structures with effective ENZ properties, exploring how surface waves can tunnel through such structures with essentially no reflection, even in the presence of sharp bends. Such ENZ metastructures support tunneling of waves with longitudinal wave numbers near zero. The surface waves may include examples of transverse electric (TE) surface waves along the grounded dielectric slabs (e.g., in the microwave regime) and TE surface-plasmon polariton waves along the negative-permeability interfaces. The ENZ metastructures can transfer the surface wave energy from one side to another by an anomalous squeezing effect, which is effectively independent of the length and the shape of the ENZ metastructures. The interaction of electromagnetic waves with such systems offers exciting possibilities for the design of flat photonic devices and components.

Body: Surface plasmon polariton (SPP), which result from the strong coupling of bound electromagnetic (EM) waves and collective charge oscillations, enable subwavelength manipulation of light and matter interaction. Conventional noble metals-based SPP excited in the visible and near-Infrared spectra ranges suffer from large energy losses and cannot be dynamically tuned. Thanks to its 2D nature, graphene has emerged as a promising alternative plasmonic material with well- confined SPPs in the mid-infrared (MIR) and terahertz (THz) ranges and remarkable tunability. On the other hand, polar dielectric materials support low optical losses and sub-wavelength mode in the MIR and THz regions via surface phonon polariton (SPhP)mode' stimulation within the Reststrahlen band, a narrow spectral range between transverse optical (TO) and longitudinal optical (LO) frequencies. Due to the excellent polaritonic responses in both graphene and silicon carbide in the MIR and THz regions, devices combining the two materials are inferred to greatly advance photonics and THz technologies. We have recently theoretically demonstrated the strong confinement and large propagation figures of merit (FOM) for hybrid surface plasmon and surface phonon polariton in the epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide. The ability to confine such MIR light into small volume through excitation of SPP and SPhP has many implications for optoelectronic technologies such as the MIR photodetection[2], sensing[3], and solar cells[4]. Epitaxial graphene(EG) grown on silicon carbide(SiC) on silicon(Si) has been investigated as a suitable platform for graphene growth on semiconductors to meet the prospective technologies [5]. Despite this platform being very advantageous, experimental and theoretical works demonstrating the potentials properties/applications of EG on SiC on Si are still missing. Here we combine electromagnetic simulations based on finite elements method (FEM) with attenuated total reflectance Fourier transformed infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy to indicate improved MIR absorption, E field enhancement, and tunability for graphene-coated SiC nanowires (NWs). As anticipated, low absorption was confirmed from both simulations and measurements on bare SiC NWs, further supported by the calculated weak electric field due to the thin size of SiC NWs being incapable of absorbing sufficient light. On the other hand, enhanced absorption for the SiC NWs was measured by ATR-FTIR after a conformal graphitization of NWs[6]. Our previous study of this material system revealed a low-density oxide layer formed between graphene and SiC NWs[6]. This oxide layer between EG and SiC NW has been implemented in the FEM model, leading to field enhancement of incident EM field and strongly confined in the thin oxide. This substantial absorption and field enhancement originates from the coupling between the incident MIR photon and the plasmon/ phonon in graphene and SiC, respectively, with the oxide layer acting as a coupling medium. Furthermore, we demonstrate the modes' tunability whereby tuning the graphene's Fermi energy, the modes' resonance frequencies can be shifted to ~ 100 cm-1. Lastly, we realize substantial field enhancement, which is achieved by carefully tuning the graphene's Fermi energy and adjusting the spectra position of mode 1(mode on the left of LO frequency) closer to TO frequency. These results hold promise for various photonic applications such as perfect absorber to improve solar cell, MIR photodetectors, and other tunable photonics. [1]P. Rufangura, et al., J. Phys. Mater., vol. 3, no. 3, p. 032005, 2020. [2]T. Low and P. Avouris, ACS nano, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 1086-1101, 2014. [3]A. G. Brolo, Nat. Photon., vol. 6, no. 11, p. 709, 2012. [4]H. A. Atwater and A. Polman, Nat. Mater., vol. 9, no. 3, p. 205, 2010. [5] N. Mishra et al., Phys. Status Solidi (a), vol. 213, no. 9, pp. 2277-2289, 2016. [6]N. Mishra et al., J. Appl. Phys., vol. 126, no. 6, p. 065304, 2019.

An anisotropic impedance surface based on electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) theory is proposed to produce reconfigurable dual-beam radiation through surface-wave (SW) lensing by controlling SW propagation across the surface-to-air interface. The reconfiguration of the lensing effect is triggered by switching between 4.0- and 4.5-GHz frequencies, utilizing the anisotropy of the impedance surface created from two mutually exclusive EBGs along the two orthogonal spaces. The bandgaps are formed by a periodic arrangement of two different split-ring resonators (SRRs) with bandgaps at around 4.0 and 4.5 GHz along the orthogonal y- and x-axes, respectively, producing a strong axially symmetric anisotropy. As a result, a surface-bound wave, i.e., both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM), faces asymmetric propagation reluctance toward these two directions one of which is very high compared to the other at frequencies around the individual bandgaps of the unit cells. The proposed impedance surface is designed and simulated using commercial electromagnetic simulation software and then fabricated and measured to validate the model.