Plasmonic instabilities and terahertz waves amplification in graphene metamaterials

Abstract: Plasmon oscillations have been intensively studied for more than forty years in conventional two-dimensional electron gas systems in order to find new alternatives to the vacuum devices based on the Smith-Purcell effect in the far-infrared region. However, beside the multiple endeavors, up to date, the plasmon generation in semiconductor heterostructures has been very inefficient. Here we demonstrate that the use of high mobility graphene metamaterials, due to their well-known stronger light-plasmon coupling compared to semiconductor materials can significantly improve the efficiency of far-infrared plasmonic amplifiers and generators. We explore current-driven plasmon dynamics including perfect transparency and light amplification in monolayer graphene structures. Current-induced complete suppression of the graphene absorption is experimentally observed in a broad frequency range followed by a giant amplification (up to about 9 % gain) of an incoming terahertz radiation at room temperature. These active plasmonic processes are triggered by relatively low bias voltage in the graphene devices leading to external quantum efficiency of about two orders of magnitude higher than those of the popular optical-to-terahertz conversion devices largely used in far-infrared technologies. Our results combined with the relatively low level of losses and high degree of spatial confinement of plasmons in graphene will open pathways for a wide range of integrated high speed active optoelectronics devices.