All-plasmonic switching effect in the graphene nanostructures containing quantum emitters

Abstract

Nonlinear plasmonic effects in perspective 2D materials containing low-dimensional quantum emitters can be a basis of a novel technological platform for the fabrication of fast all-plasmonic triggers, transistors, and sensors. This article considers the conditions for achieving a strong coupling between the surface plasmon–polariton (SPP) and quantum emitter taking into account the modification of local density of optical states in graphene waveguide. In the condition of strong coupling, nonlinear interaction between two SPP modes propagating along the graphene waveguide integrated with a stub nanoresonator loaded with core–shell semiconductor nanowires (NWs) was investigated. Using the 2D full-wave electromagnetic simulation, we studied the different transmittance regimes of the stub with NW for both the strong pump SPP and weak signal SPP tuned to interband and intraband transition in NW, respectively. We solved the practical problem of parameters optimization of graphene waveguide and semiconductor nanostructures and found such a regime of NW–SPP interaction that corresponds to the destructive interference with the signal SPP transmittance through the stub less than 7% in the case for pump SPP to be turned off. In contrast, the turning on the pump SPP leads to a transition to constructive interference in the stub and enhancement of signal SPP transmittance to 93%. In our model, the effect of plasmonic switching occurs with a rate of 50 GHz at wavelength 8 µm for signal SPP localized inside 20 nm graphene stub loaded with core–shell InAs/ZnS NW.