Nonreciprocal plasmons in one-dimensional carbon nanostructures
arXiv:2509.16109 · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-67872-5
Abstract
The directional control of light in miniaturized plasmonic waveguides holds appealing possibilities for emerging nanophotonic technologies, but is hindered by the intrinsic reciprocal optical response of conventional plasmonic materials. While the ability of graphene to sustain large electrical currents shows promise for nonreciprocal plasmonics, studies have been limited to extended samples characterized by linear electrical dispersion. Here, we theoretically explore quantum finite-size and nonlocal effects in the nonreciprocal response of mesoscale plasmonic waveguides comprised of drift-biased graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Using atomistic simulation methods based on tight-binding electronic states and self-consistent mean-field optical response, we reveal that a moderate electrical bias can significantly break reciprocity for propagation of guided plasmon modes in GNRs and CNTs exhibiting electronic band gaps. The excitation by a nearby point dipole emitter and subsequent propagation of guided plasmon modes can thus be actively controlled by the applied current, which can further be leveraged to mediate nonlocal interactions of multiple emitters. Our results establish graphene nanostructures as a promising atomically thin platform for nonreciprocal nanophotonics.
16 pages, 12 figures
References in corpus (29)
- Graphene Plasmonics: Challenges and Opportunities
- Exceptional ballistic transport in epitaxial graphene nanoribbons
- Quantum transport in carbon nanotubes
- Breakdown Current Density of Graphene Nano Ribbons
- Graphene nanoribbons for quantum electronics
- An Introduction to Graphene Plasmonics
- All-Passive Nonreciprocal Metasurface
- Quantum Effects in the Nonlinear Response of Graphene Plasmons
- Superradiance mediated by Graphene Surface Plasmons
- Efficient Fizeau Drag from Dirac electrons in monolayer graphene
- Electric current induced unidirectional propagation of surface plasmon-polaritons
- Negative Landau damping in bilayer graphene
- Drift-induced Unidirectional Graphene Plasmons
- Kerr nonlinearity and plasmonic bistability in graphene nanoribbons
- Nonlocal effects and enhanced nonreciprocity in current-driven graphene systems
- Current-induced birefringent absorption and non-reciprocal plasmons in graphene
- Ultra-Efficient Coupling of a Quantum Emitter to the Tunable Guided Plasmons of a Carbon Nanotube
- Graphene hot-electron light bulb: incandescence from hBN-encapsulated graphene in air
- Non-Reciprocal and Collimated Surface Plasmons in Drift-biased Graphene Metasurfaces
- Roadmap on Nonlocality in Photonic Materials and Metamaterials
- Current-controlled light scattering and asymmetric plasmon propagation in graphene
- Drift-induced modifications to the dynamical polarization of graphene
- Plasmonic nonreciprocity driven by band hybridization in moiré materials
- Strong-field-driven dynamics and high-harmonic generation in interacting 1D systems
- Demonstration of a plasmonic nonlinear pseudo-diode
- Electrically-driven amplification of terahertz acoustic waves in graphene
- Directional dependence of the plasmonic gain and nonreciprocity in drift-current biased graphene
- Nonlinear quantum logic with colliding graphene plasmons
- Plasmon Fizeau drag in 3D Dirac and Weyl semimetals