Tailoring the energy distribution and loss of 2D plasmons

The ability to tailor the energy distribution of plasmons at the nanoscale has many applications in nanophotonics, such as designing plasmon lasers, spasers, and quantum emitters. To this end, we analytically study the energy distribution and the proper fi eld quantization of 2D plasmons with speci fi c examples for graphene plasmons. We fi nd that the portion of the plasmon energy contained inside graphene ( energy con fi nement factor ) can exceed 50%, despite graphene being in fi nitely thin. In fact, this very high energy con fi nement can make it challenging to tailor the energy distribution of graphene plasmons just by modifying the surrounding dielectric environment or the geometry, such as changing the separation distance between two coupled graphene layers. However, by adopting concepts of parity-time symmetry breaking, we show that tuning the loss in one of the two coupled graphene layers can simultaneously tailor the energy con fi nement factor and propagation characteristics, causing the phenomenon of loss-induced plasmonic transparency.

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