Graphene is now a crucial component of many device designs in electronics and optics. Just like the noble metals, this single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice can support surface plasmons, which are central to several sensing technologies in the mid-infrared regime. As with classical metal plasmons, periodic corrugations in the graphene sheet itself can be used to launch these surface waves; however, as graphene plasmons are tightly confined, the role of unwanted surface roughness, even at a nanometer scale, cannot be ignored. In this work, we revisit our previous numerical experiments on metal plasmons launched by vanishingly small grating structures, with the addition of graphene to the structure. These simulations are conducted with a recently devised, rapid, and robust high-order spectral scheme of the authors, and with it we carefully demonstrate how the plasmonic response of a perfectly flat sheet of graphene can be significantly altered with even a tiny corrugation (on the order of merely 5 nm). With these results, we demonstrate the primary importance of fabrication techniques that produce interfaces whose deviations from flat are on the order of angstroms.

中文翻译：

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用消失的小周期性光栅结构发射石墨烯表面等离激元波

石墨烯现在是电子和光学领域许多设备设计中的关键组成部分。就像贵金属一样，蜂窝状晶格中的碳原子这一单层可以支撑表面等离激元，这些等离激元对于中红外领域的多种传感技术至关重要。与经典的金属等离激元一样，石墨烯片本身的周期性波纹可用于发射这些表面波。但是，由于石墨烯等离子体激元受到严格限制，因此即使在纳米尺度上，不希望有的表面粗糙度的作用也不容忽视。在这项工作中，我们重新审视了以前的关于由消失的小光栅结构发射的金属等离子体激元的数值实验，并在结构中添加了石墨烯。这些仿真是根据作者最近设计的，快速且健壮的高阶频谱方案进行的，并用它仔细地证明了，即使是很小的波纹（仅5 nm量级），一个完全平坦的石墨烯片的等离子体响应也能显着改变。通过这些结果，我们证明了制造能够产生与平面的偏差为埃量级的界面的制造技术的首要重要性。