Tunable Slow Light in Graphene Metamaterial in a Broad Terahertz Range

A graphene-based metamaterial with tunable electromagnetically induced transparency is numerically studied in this paper. The proposed structure consists of a graphene layer composed of H shape between two cut wires, by breaking symmetry can control EIT-like effects and by increasing the asymmetry in the structure has strong coupling between elements. It is important that the peak frequency of transmission window can be dynamically controlled over a broad frequency range by varying the chemical potential of graphene layer. The results show that high refractive index sensitivity and figure of merit can be achieved in asymmetrical structures which is good for sensing applications. We calculated the group delay and the results show we can control the group velocity by varying the S parameter in asymmetrical structure. The characteristics of our system indicate important potential applications in integrated optical circuits such as optical storage, ultrafast plasmonic switches, high performance filters, and slow-light devices.     

A Novel Terahertz Semiconductor Metamaterial for Slow Light Device and Dual-Band Modulator Applications

In this paper, we propose a novel planar semiconductor metamaterial which consists of two H-shape structures which are nested together and composed of InSb deposited on a thin quartz substrate. The two H-shape structures serve as the bright modes and are exited strongly by the incident wave and interact with each other. This coupling leads to a powerful plasmonically induced transparency (PIT) effect at terahertz frequencies. This scheme provides a way to achieve slow light, and the corresponding group index can reach a value of 1300. We calculated group velocity dispersion (GVD) and saw this structure was a low group velocity dispersion (LGVD) system. Therefore, the proposed structure will be useful in designing slow-light devices, optical buffers, delay lines, and ultra-sensitive sensors. We also showed that the proposed design is tunable, namely changes in geometric parameters and type of semiconductor can largely change the group index. In addition, we considered another application for our design that is a thermal dual-band terahertz metamaterial modulator and numerically obtained frequency and amplitude modulation depth, tunability bandwidth, and loss for this device. We obtained an amplitude modulator depth of 99.7 % and a frequency modulator depth of 47 % that verified this structure can be used in wireless communication and encode information systems in the THz regime.     

New Approach of Plasmonically Induced Reflectance in a Planar Metamaterial for Plasmonic Sensing Applications

We theoretically demonstrate and investigate plasmonically induced reflectance (PIR) in a new planar metamaterial with two completely different approaches. Here, we not only show that broken symmetry is a general strategy to create electromagnetically induced reflectance (EIR)-like effect but also demonstrate that the nanoplasmonic EIR can be realized even without broken symmetry via the excitation of the higher-order plasmonic modes in the same designed planar metamaterial. In nanophotonics, plasmonic structures enable large field strengths within small mode volumes. Therefore, combining EIR with nanoplasmonics would open up the way toward ultracompact sensors with extremely high sensitivity. In the second approach of creating the PIR of our proposed nanostructure, the restrictions on size are partially relaxed, making fabrication much easier. Their interactions and coupling between plasmonic modes are investigated in detail by analyzing field distributions and spectral responses. Also, we show that the PIR frequency position depended very sensitively on the dielectric surrounding. Furthermore, the narrow and fully modulated PIR features due to the extraordinary reduction of damping may serve for designing novel devices in the field of chemical and biomedical sensing.