Probing nonlocal effects in metals with graphene plasmons

Eduardo J. C. Dias*, David Alcaraz Iranzo, P. A. D. Goncalves, Yaser Hajati, Yuliy Bludov, Antti-Pekka Jauho, N. Asger Mortensen, Frank H. L. Koppens, N. M. R. Peres

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the effects of nonlocality on the optical properties of a system consisting of a thin metallic film separated from a graphene sheet by a hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) layer. We show that nonlocal effects in the metal have a strong impact on the spectrum of the surface plasmon-polaritons on graphene. If the graphene sheet is nanostructured into a periodic grating, we show that the resulting extinction curves can be used to shed light on the importance of nonlocal effects in metals. Therefore graphene surface plasmons emerge as a tool for probing nonlocal effects in metallic nanostructures, including thin metallic films. As a byproduct of our study, we show that nonlocal effects may lead to smaller losses for the graphene plasmons than what is predicted by a local calculation. Finally, we demonstrate that such nonlocal effects can be very well mimicked using a local theory with an effective spacer thickness larger than its actual value.
Original languageEnglish
Article number245405
JournalPhysical Review B
Volume97
Issue number24
Number of pages16
ISSN1098-0121
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

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