Surface Plasmon Instability Leading to Emission of Radiation

Abstract

We propose a new energy conversion approach from a dc electric field to a terahertz wave based on hybrid semiconductors by combining two-dimensional (2D) crystalline layers and a thick conducting material with possible applications as a source of coherent radiation. The hybrid nano-structure may consist of a single or pair of sheets of graphene, silicene or a 2D electron gas as would occur at a semiconductor hetero-interface. When an electric current is passed through a layer, we discover that the low-frequency plasmons may become unstable beyond a critical wave vector $q_c$. However, there is no instability for a single driven layer far from the conductor and the instability of an isolated pair of 2D layers occurs only at ultra long wavelengths. To bring in frequency agility for this spontaneous radiation, we manipulate the surface-plasmon induced instability, which leads to the emission of radiation (spiler), to occur at shorter wavelengths by choosing the conductor electron density, layer separation, distances of layers from the conductor surface and the driving-current strength. Applications of terahertz radiation from spiler for chemical analysis, security scanning, medical imaging and telecommunications are expected.

8 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1410.2851

References in corpus (10)

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• Exploring the Optical States for Black Phosphorus: Anisotropy and Bandgap Tuning
• Controlling plasmon modes and damping in buckled two-dimensional material open systems
• Plasma Wave Instabilities in Non-Equilibrium Graphene
• Role of electron back action on photons in hybridizing double-layer graphene plasmons with localized photons