Graphene plasmonics: Comparison of collective modes in n-SNOM reflectivity

of doped graphene on a substrate with different approaches

Dominik Kreil, Michaela Haslhofer, Helga M. Böhm
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johannes Kepler University, Linz Austria
dominik.kreil@jku.at

Since the invention of graphene [4] in 2004, a run for this intrinsic two-dimensional material has begun. The electrons
in this system behaves like massless dirac fermions which ensures extraordinary conductivity. Similar to conventional two-
dimensional heterostructure semiconductors, graphene shares a square root like plasmon dispersion relation. This makes
it difficult to excite collective modes in this thin system. In 2011, the reflectivity of a single graphene sheet on SiO2 was
measured by the Fei et al. [1]. They were able to generate and detect longitudinal excitations in the graphene using optical
scanning near field microscopy (SNOM). This facilitates the study of electron–electron correlations in such systems.
On the theoretical side, particle density up to 1012 cm−2 makes modern many particle theory approaches indispensable.
The definition of the collective modes is quite ambiguous and depend on the experimental setups. They are based on
the complex dielectric function ε = εI + i εII . These definitions are closely related, but only equivalent in damping free
regions [2]. We will discuss the following three types:
−1

1. as maximum of the loss function Im (a) = max; related to the double differential scattering cross section
ε q,ωpl

2. as the vanishing of the complex ε for complex ω, determining reflection coefficients ε (q, ωI + iωII ) = 0 , ωpl(b) ≡ ωI
3. often approximated as the zero of Re ε, εI q, ωpl(c) = 0 , with ωpl(c) always lower than ωpl(a,b)

θ1
θ1
n1
q
n2
θ2
bulk

Fig. 1. (left:) Experimental setup: s-SNOM [1] (top). The graphene sheet is placed on a SiO2 bluk substrate. An AFM tip
is shined by infrared light which induces longitudinal excitations in the sheet. This is similar to reflectivity measurements
(bottom). (right:) Calculated loss function −Im ε(q, ω)−1 of the setup within linear response theory. The collective
modes are highlighted with lines. On the bottom, the damping in the system is shown.

The theory of sheet reflectivity will be show in a short introduction. Further, we are presenting calculations of the
dielectric function as well as the sheet reflectivity of graphene on a bulk sybstrate. Here, we are using linear response the-
ory and in a first step restricting our self to the well known random phase approximation. From this, collective excitations
of can be obtained using the methods given above; and shown in Fig.1. (right). We want to shine light on these different
approaches of plasmon calculation and compare them to the available experimental results. In future work, we want to
include spin-orbit coupling into the theory. This will cover more complex materials like transition-metal dichalcogenides
as MoS2 , which is a good candidate for valleytronic applications [3].

[1] Zhe Fei, Gregory O Andreev, Wenzhong Bao, Lingfeng M Zhang, Alexander S. McLeod, Chen Wang, Margaret K Stewart, Zeng Zhao, Gerardo
Dominguez, Mark Thiemens, et al. Infrared nanoscopy of dirac plasmons at the graphene–sio2 interface. Nano letters, 11(11):4701–4705, 2011.
[2] Raphael Hobbiger, Jürgen T. Drachta, Dominik Kreil, and Helga M. Böhm. Phenomenological plasmon broadening and relation to the dispersion.
Solid State Communications, 252:54 – 58, 2017.
[3] Cong Mai, Andrew Barrette, Yifei Yu, Yuriy G Semenov, Ki Wook Kim, Linyou Cao, and Kenan Gundogdu. Many-body effects in valleytronics:
Direct measurement of valley lifetimes in single-layer mos2. Nano letters, 14(1):202–206, 2013.
[4] Kostya S Novoselov, Andre K Geim, SV Morozov, D Jiang, Y Zhang, SV Dubonos, IV Grigorieva, and AA Firsov. Electric field effect in
atomically thin carbon films. Science, 306(5696):666–669, 2004.
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θ1
n1

n2
θ2
bulk

Fig. 2. andere bilder