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The properties of hybrid nonlinear surface-phonon-plasmon-polaritons (SP3) at the interface of nonlinear medium and graphene-covered hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) are investigated theoretically. It is demonstrated that the hybrid nonlinear SP3 can be tuned by controlling the chemical potential, layer number and relaxation time of graphene. The real and imaginary parts of the propagation constant increase by decreasing the Fermi energy or the layer number of the graphene in the frequency outside of the upper Reststrahlen band of hBN. Moreover, we show that the nonlinear dielectric permittivity has great effect on the propagation constant. The real part of the propagation constant increases with positive nonlinear dielectric permittivity at different frequency for low frequency mode; while the imaginary part of the propagation constant decreases in the upper Reststrahlen band of hBN, keeps nearly constant in the lower band, and increases outside the Reststrahlen band with positive nonlinear dielectric permittivity for low frequency mode.

We investigate theoretically the optical bistability from a Fabry-Perot cavity with graphene in the terahertz (THz) frequency. It is demonstrated that the optical bistablility in this cavity can be realized due to the electric field enhancement and the giant third-order nonlinear conductivity of graphene. The optical bistable behavior is strongly dependent on the transmission amplitude of the mirror and the position of the graphene in the cavity. It is especially important that the hysterical behaviors of the transmitted light rely on the optical conductivity of graphene, making the Fabry-Perot cavity to be a good candidate for dynamic tunable optical bistable device in the THz frequencies, owing to the possibility of high tunability of graphene conductivity by means of external electrostatic or magnetostatic field.

The symmetrical confined states are found in photonic quantum-well structures with single-negative materials, in which the photonic barrier is based on the zero-effective-phase gap. The number and frequencies of the symmetrical confined states can be tuned by varying the period number and thicknesses of the well photonic crystal, respectively. Furthermore, the symmetrical confined states of the structures are less sensitive to the incident angle and polarization, compared with previous confined states of photonic quantum-well structures based on the Bragg or zero-average-index gap. The structures open a promising way to fabricate symmetrically tunable and omnidirectional multichannel filters for future dense wavelength division multiplexing applications.

A novel method to enlarge the zero-effective-phase bandgap has been presented in the one-dimensional photonic crystals by sandwiching the third material between the two single-negative materials to form a one-dimensional ternary periodic structure. The band-edges formula for the one-dimensional ternary photonic crystal is derived based on the effective-medium theory and the expressions of the upper and lower frequency limits for the ternary photonic crystals are obtained. Then two schemes to enlarge the zero-effective-phase bandgaps are put forward. Moreover, the angular- and polarization-dependences of the photonic bandgap are investigated. Finally, the role of the dispersion in the sandwiched layer on the bandgap extending has been discussed and two schemes are also presented to enlarge the zero-effective-phase photonic bandgap.

A method to enlarge the omnidirectional photonic bandgaps (PBGs) has been presented in the one-dimensional photonic crystals by sandwiching a superconductor layer between two dielectric materials to form a one-dimensional ternary periodic structure. The angle- and thickness-dependence of these PBGs have been investigated in detail, and then the thermally-tunability of these omnidirectional PBGs by controlling external temperature of the superconductor is discussed. It is shown that these omnidirectional PBGs can be extended markedly in the one-dimensional ternary photonic crystal and the gap width or the wavelength range can also be tuned by varying external temperature.

We theoretically investigate the Imbert–Fedorov (IF) shifts of a reflected light beam from the dielectric interface containing a planar anisotropic monolayer graphene sheet that is subject to an external perpendicular magnetic field. We calculate and discuss the dependence of the IF shifts on the intensity of the magnetic field, the incidence angle of the beam, and the central frequency of the beam. It is shown that IF shifts can be controlled by modifying the intensity of the magnetic field and the incidence angle without changing the material and the structure of the dielectric interface. Moreover, there exists an optimum nonzero control magnetic field under which the IF shift can reach maximum value.

As a kind of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide material, tungsten diselenide (WSe2) has attracted increasing attention, owing to its gapped electronic structure, relatively high carrier mobility, and valley pseudospin, all of which show its valuable nonlinear optical properties. There are few studies on the nonlinear optical properties of WSe2 and correlation with its electronic structure. In this paper, the effects of spatial self-phase modulation (SSPM) and distortion influence of WSe2 ethanol suspensions are systematically studied, namely, the nonlinear refractive index and third-order nonlinear optical effect. We obtained the WSe2 dispersions SSPM distortion formation mechanism, and through it, we calculated the nonlinear refractive index n2, nonlinear susceptibility χ(3), and their wavelength dependence under the excitation of 457 nm, 532 nm, and 671 nm lasers. Moreover, by use of its strong and broadband nonlinear optical response, all-optical switching of two different laser beams due to spatial cross-phase modulation has been realized experimentally. Our results are useful for future optical devices, such as all-optical switching and all-optical information conversion.

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with two-dimensional (2D) materials has been proposed to enhance the sensitivity of biosensors. Here, we will apply SPR to greatly enhance and control the Goos-Hanchen (GH) shift. It is theoretically shown that the GH shifts can be significantly enhanced in the SPR structure coated with a graphene-MoS2 heterostructure. By changing the layer number of graphene or MoS2, the giant GH shifts can be obtained. Maximum GH shift (235.8λ) can be obtained when 2 layers of MoS2 and 3 layers of graphene are combined. Moreover, the GH shift can be positive or negative depending on the layer number of MoS2 and graphene. When the GH shift is used as the interrogation for the biosensor, it has a superior sensitivity. By comparing the sensitivity based on the SPR with only Au coating or Au-graphene coating, the sensitivity of the GH shift-interrogated biosensor can be enhanced by nearly 300 times, and hence paves the way for further applications in fundamental biological studies and environmental monitoring.

A new application of rugate structures is proposed as low-pass spatial filters for beam smoothing. By using the transfer matrix method to analyze the spatial properties of the bandgap of rugate structures, the low-pass rugate spatial filters with both an almost ideal flat bandpass and a rather steep switching between pass- and stop-bands are designed. The angle-domain bandwidth of the spatial filters can be adjusted by changing the parameters of rugate structures for a given light frequency. The near-field simulations carried out by using the finite-difference time-domain technique confirm the possibility of an efficient light smoothing.

Spatiotemporal instability (STI) in metamaterials (MMs) with a Kerr-type nonlinear polarization is investigated. A general expression for instability gain, taking account of the effects of arbitrary high-order linear and nonlinear dispersions, is derived. Special attention is paid to the general features of instability induced by nonlinear dispersion effects originating from the combination of dispersive magnetic permeability and nonlinear polarization. It is shown that, just like their linear counterparts, all even-order nonlinear dispersions not only deform the original instability regions, but also may lead to the appearance of new instability regions. However, all odd-order nonlinear dispersions always suppress STI irrespective of their signs, quite different from their linear counterparts which exert no influence on instability. Moreover, we find that, unlike the linear dispersions, the nonlinear dispersions lead to the dependence of gain peak on the spatial modulation frequency. The role of the firs...

We investigate the generation and properties of dark and bright surface waves at the interface of a conventional medium and a metamaterial. It is shown that the stable dark and bright surface solitons can coexist even when the nonlinear Kerr coefficients of the two media are negative, completely different from those at the interface between two conventional media. Most importantly, both the dark and bright surface solitons exist only within a certain range of the effective refractive index of the metamaterial, greatly depending on the frequency of the electromagnetic wave propagating in it. Therefore, the generation conditions for surface solitons, and the properties of the generated surface solitons such as the peak positions and the intensity of the dark and bright surface solitons, can be controlled by adjusting the structure parameters of the metamaterial and/or the frequency of the electromagnetic wave.

Due to the quantum analogy with optics, the resonant optical tunneling effect (ROTE) has been proposed to investigate both the fundamental physics and the practical applications of optical switches and liquid refractive index sensors. In this paper, the ROTE is used to enhance the spin Hall effect (SHE) of transmitted light. It is demonstrated that sandwiching a layer of a high-refractive-index medium (boron nitride crystal) between two low-refractive-index layers (silica) can effectively enhance the photonic SHE due to the increased refractive index gradient and an enhanced evanescent field near the interface between silica and boron nitride. A maximum transverse shift of the horizontal polarization state in the ROTE structure of about 22.25 µm has been obtained, which is at least three orders of magnitude greater than the transverse shift in the frustrated total internal reflection structure. Moreover, the SHE can be manipulated by controlling the component materials and the thickness of the ROTE structure. These findings open the possibility for future applications of photonic SHE in precision metrology and spin-based photonics.

Most of hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) investigated to date are based on isotropic materials resulting in uniaxial HMMs in which dielectric permittivities perpendicular to the propagation direction are the same. Using an anisotropic material constituent to form a HMM is a promising research direction providing opportunities to control the dielectric permittivity in all three directions independently. Herein, we propose and theoretically demonstrate novel biaxial HMMs composed of multilayer stacks of few-layer black phosphorus (BP) and Au thin films. Black phosphorus is an anisotropic material exhibiting crystal axis-dependent dielectric permittivity due to its puckered crystal structure. The proposed HMM provides previously unattained hyperbolic dispersion relations in which the dielectric permittivity in Z-direction of the structure shows opposite sign from that in X- and Y-directions in the most wavelengths from 400~900nm. Furthermore, we calculated the Purcell factor of the proposed biaxial HMMs using full-field electromagnetic simulations.

In this paper, we systematically investigate the optical forces exerted on a black phosphorus (BP) coated dielectric particle by a Gaussian beam. The optical forces of the BP coated particle could be modified effectively by tuning the characteristics of the BP layer, such as the carrier density, BP thickness, and the angular dependence of anisotropic conductivity. The resonant mechanism and whispering gallery mode of the BP coated particle are analyzed. Furthermore, the multi-polar surface plasmons of the BP coated dielectric particle excited by the Laguerre Gaussian beam in the infrared band are also investigated. These investigations provide rich potential applications in flexible optical manipulation and optoelectronic devices.

We present a scheme to improve the absorption performance of microwave absorbing materials by using the electric resonance resulting from an array of subwavelength metallic cut wires. To demonstrate this scheme, we have prepared a combined absorber (CA) by sandwiching the array of subwavelength copper cut wires between two layers of carbonyl iron powder (CIP) coating. Experimental results show that the prepared absorber has an evidently enhanced reflection loss (RL) and a significantly wider absorption bandwidth (4.5-9.5 GHz) for RL less than -10 dB compared to the CIP coating that has an absorption frequency range of 5-7 GHz. Numerical simulations confirm the experimental results, and further demonstrate that the absorption performance of the CA can be enhanced and tuned simply by adjusting the dimension of the cut wires, and the arrangement and layer number of the cut wire array (CWA), providing that the electric loss of the CWA is properly matched to the magnetic loss of CIP.

Nonlinear coupled equations describing the copropagation of two light pulses of different central frequencies in metamaterials (MMs) are derived. Based on the derived equations and the Drude model for dispersive MMs, the modulation instabilities (MIs) induced by cross-phase modulation (XPM) for different combination of the signs of refractive index experienced by the two optical pulses, respectively, are analyzed. It is shown that, in the absence of group-velocity mismatch, the property of MI only depends on the sign of group-velocity dispersion the two pulses experience, irrespective of the sign of refractive index. The group-velocity mismatch plays an important role in the occurrence of MI, especially when the central frequencies of the two pulses near the electric or magnetic plasma frequency of the MM. The theoretical results are confirmed by numerical simulations.

A new application of one-dimensional photonic crystals containing negative-index materials is proposed as low-pass spatial filters. Through optimizing the parameters of defect layer, a series of polarization-independent defect modes in the zero-average-index gap of the photonic crystals are obtained with the increase of the incident angle. Based on these defect modes, polarization-independent low-pass spatial filters are designed. The spatial-frequency bandwidth of the spatial filters can be adjusted by changing the period number of the defective photonic crystal structures. In addition, the effect of the losses of negative-index materials on the spatial filters is considered.

The existence conditions for total reflection and the corresponding critical angle at the interface separating an isotropic medium and an indefinite metamaterial for TE- and TM-polarized electromagnetic waves are obtained. For different kinds of indefinite metamaterial, there appear different total reflection phenomena. Particularly, the anomalous total reflection in which the incident angle is smaller than the critical angle and the Brewster’s angle can be smaller than the critical angle can occur for anti-cutoff medium. Furthermore, the omnidirectional total reflection exists for the always cutoff medium and anti-cutoff medium. The total reflection depends on the thickness of indefinite metamaterial when the indefinite metamaterial is finite, and the photon tunneling phenomenon can occur when the thickness of indefinite metamaterial is smaller than wavelength.

The photonic band gap structure of 1D photonic crystal with a negative index medium defect layer is studied by using the transfer matrix method. Investigations show that the introduction of negative index medium defect layer and the increase of the negative index value will result in an extension of the band gap. Moreover, by increasing the negative index, the width of defect layer and the numbers of period photonic crystal, the width of defect modes will be narrowed, which is advantaged to obtain optical filters with narrow band. Finally, the effects of absorption on the properties of band gap and on defect modes have been discussed.

We study the lateral shift of a light beam transmitted from an indefinite medium slab. The analytic expressions for the transmission coefficient and the lateral shift are obtained by using the stationary-phase method, and different conditions for the occurrence of a negative lateral shift are deduced. It is shown that the thickness of the indefinite medium strongly affects the properties of the lateral shift. For a larger thickness, the sign of the lateral shift depends only on the signs of the permittivity and permeability, while, for a smaller thickness, the sign of the lateral shift is determined by the combined effect of the incident angle of the light, the signs of the permittivity and permeability, and the thickness of the indefinite medium slab. In addition, the lateral shift at the transmitted resonance points is found to be enhanced greatly, and the sign of the lateral shift around the transmitted resonance points is strongly dependent on the permittivity and permeability of the indefinite medium. Some examples are given to validate the obtained theoretical results.

The tunnelling time and lateral shift of photon tunnelling through the frustrated total internal reflection structure containing indefinite metamaterials are obtained by employing the stationary-phase approximation. It is found that the photon tunnelling only occurs when the barrier is thin enough. For the indefinite metamaterial with one-sheet hyperbolic dispersion, the anomalous total reflection occurs, and the negative lateral shift and tunnelling time can be obtained. The negative tunnelling time indicates that superluminal propagation could be observed when a photon tunnels through the indefinite metamaterial. Both lateral shift and tunnelling time tend to a saturation value, respectively, as the barrier thickness increases. Moreover, the dependence of properties of four kinds of indefinite metamaterial on the thickness, the permittivity and permeability tensors is discussed.

We study the phenomenon of photon tunneling through a frustrated total internal reflection structure with a dispersive lossy indefinite metamaterial barrier. The tunneling coefficient, lateral shift, and tunneling time for different incident light waves through the barrier are obtained by employing the stationary-phase approximation. The properties of tunneling time and lateral shift are discussed for different metamaterial parameters. It is shown that negative lateral shift and tunneling time can appear in the cutoff and always cutoff metamaterials. The lateral shift can be enhanced by adjusting the light frequency, the barrier thickness, and the permittivity or permeability of the indefinite metamaterial. In addition, it is found that the lateral shift can be resonantly amplified due to the weak loss of the indefinite metamaterial slab. The Hartman effects of the lateral shift and tunneling time are also demonstrated.

We propose a modified Kretschmann-Raether configuration to realize the low threshold optical bistable devices at the terahertz frequencies. The metal layer is replaced by the dielectric sandwich structure with the insertion of graphene and this configuration can support TM-polarization surface electromagnetic wave. The surface plasmon resonance is strongly dependent on the Fermi-level of graphene and the thickness of the sandwich structure. It is found that the switching-up and switching-down intensities required to observe the optical bistable behavior are lowered markedly due to the excitation of the graphene surface plasmons, thus making this configuration a prime candidate for experimental investigation at the terahertz range. And the switching threshold value can be further reduced by decreasing the Fermi-level or increasing the thickness of sandwich structure, hence providing a new way for realizing tunable optical bistable devices. Finally, the optical bistability at higher terahertz frequency and the influence of relaxation time under the actual experimental condition on Fermi-level are discussed.

The transmission property of the photonic crystal containing negative index material is analyzed by means of transfer matrix method. It is demonstrated that a defect mode appears in the conventional Bragg gap and the defect mode is sensitive to the position of the defect cell. For the first time to our knowledge we introduce two defects into such a structure and discuss the dependence of the transmission on the interval of the two defect cells. It is found that a wide degenerate defect mode appears in the Bragg gap, and this degenerate defect mode splits into two different defect modes when the two defect cells become closer.

In this paper, we have shown that perfect absorption at terahertz frequencies can be achieved by using a composite structure where graphene is coated on one-dimensional photonic crystal (1DPC) separated by a dielectric. Due to the excitation of optical Tamm states (OTSs) at the interface between the graphene and 1DPC, a strong absorption phenomenon occurs induced by the coupling of the incident light and OTSs. Although the perfect absorption produced by a metal–distributed Bragg reflector structure has been researched extensively, it is generally at a fixed frequency and not tunable. Here, we show that the perfect absorption at terahertz frequency not only can be tuned to different frequencies but also exhibits a high absorption over a wide angle range. In addition, the absorption of the proposed structure is insensitive to the polarization, and multichannel absorption can be realized by controlling the thickness of the top layer.

A nonlinear metasurface made of a few-layer graphene and a metal grating is proposed in this work. It is demonstrated that the graphene plasmons can be excited in this configuration efficiently and two quite different kinds of resonances are found. The resonant behaviors and their origins are analyzed carefully, and the influences of grating groove and period on the resonances are discussed. It is surprising that the width of grating groove plays an important role in the resonant behaviors, distinct from the dielectric gratings. Due to the coupling of graphene plasmons and the grating, the highly tunability and large near field enhancement of our structure are observed. Finally, we apply our results to the optical bistability, and the low-threshold hysterical behavior with only a few MW is observed due to the large third-order nonlinear response of graphene and the strong localized field enhancement. We believe that our results will be inspiring not only for more complicated metasurfaces involving graphene, but also for other nonlinear optical applications.

The photonic spin Hall effect (SHE) has been intensively studied and widely applied, especially in spin photonics. However, the SHE is weak and is difficult to detect directly. In this paper, we propose a method to enhance SHE with the guided-wave surface-plasmon resonance (SPR). By covering a dielectric with high refractive index on the surface of silver film, the photonic SHE can be greatly enhanced, and a giant transverse shift of horizontal polarization state is observed due to the evanescent field enhancement near the interface at the top dielectric layer and air. The maximum transverse shift of the horizontal polarization state with 11.5 μm is obtained when the thickness of Si film is optimum. There is at least an order of magnitude enhancement in contrast with the transverse shift in the conventional SPR configuration. Our research is important for providing an effective way to improve the photonic SHE and may offer the opportunity to characterize the parameters of the dielectric layer with the help of weak measurements and development of sensors based on the photonic SHE.

Due to the non-overlapping Reststrahlen bands, both type I and type II hyperbolic responses are available in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), which can be used as the guiding medium or the cladding medium in the slab waveguide. The characteristics of guided waves in the slab waveguide with hBN are theoretically investigated, and the existence conditions of the guided and surface modes of waveguides in the two types of hyperbolic responses are analyzed by using the graphic method. It is shown that, in the type-Ι hyperbolicity of the hBN waveguide, both TE and TM guided modes are existent. In the type-ΙΙ hyperbolicity, both the guided and surface modes are existent for TM guided waves; however, the guided and surface modes of TE polarization are absent. In addition, the propagation constant and the normalized power versus the thickness of waveguide are showed and the cutoff thickness and the power localization are discussed.

Antimonene, a new type of 2D group-VA material beyond phosphorene, is theoretically predicted to exhibit remarkable electronics and optical properties with enhanced stability. However, its more general and practical applications seriously lag behind due to a shortage of effective synthesis techniques in delivering high-quality few-layer antimonene (FLA) and antimonene quantum dots (AQDs), and deep understanding of the mechanism in light-antimonene interaction. Herein, based on electrochemical exfoliation and sonochemical approaches, FLA is synthesized with an average thickness down to 31.6 nm and AQDs with an average lateral size of 3.4 nm, and the corresponding nonlinear optical response is further investigated at the visible wavelength for the first time. It is shown that antimonene possesses a giant nonlinear refractive index of ≈10−5 cm2 W−1 and a high stability in ambient condition for months. The experimental findings may be considered as an important step toward antimonene-based nonlinear photonics devices (Optical Switcher, Kerr shutter, beam shaper, etc.), in which their unstable counterpart phosphorene may not compete with.

In order to effectively realize and control the critical coupling, a graphene-based hyperbolic metamaterial has been proposed to replace the absorbing thin film in the critically coupled resonance structure. Our calculations demonstrate that the critical coupling effect (near-perfect light absorption) can be achieved at the near-infrared wavelength by using this layered structure, while the critical coupling frequency can be tuned by varying the Fermi energy level of graphene sheets via electrostatic biasing. Moreover, we show that the critical coupling frequency can be tuned by changing the thickness of the dielectric or layer number of the graphene sheets in the unit cell of the graphene-dielectric HMM. The optimization performance has also been indicated, which may offer an opportunity towards the experimental designs of high efficient graphene based critical coupling devices. Published version

By coupling few-layer Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2) with fiber-taper evanescent light field, a new type of MoS2 based nonlinear optical modulating element had been successfully fabricated as a two-dimensional layered saturable absorber with strong light-matter interaction. This MoS2-taper-fiber device is not only capable of passively mode-locking an all-normal-dispersion ytterbium-doped fiber laser and enduring high power laser excitation (up to 1 W), but also functions as a polarization sensitive optical modulating component (that is, different polarized light can induce different nonlinear optical response). Thanks to the combined advantages from the strong nonlinear optical response in MoS2 together with the sufficiently-long-range interaction between light and MoS2, this device allows for the generation of high power stable dissipative solitons at 1042.6 nm with pulse duration of 656 ps and a repetition rate of 6.74 MHz at a pump power of 210 mW. Our work may also constitute the first example of MoS2-enabled wave-guiding photonic device and potentially give some new insights into two-dimensional layered materials related photonics.

A kind of tunable hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) based on the graphene-dielectric layered structure at near-infrared frequencies is presented, and the engineered surface Bloch waves between graphene-based HMM and isotropic medium are investigated. Our calculations demonstrate that the frequency and frequency range of surface Bloch waves existence can be tuned by varying the Fermi energy of graphene sheets via electrostatic biasing. Moreover, we show that the frequency range of surface Bloch waves existence can be broadened by decreasing the thickness of the dielectric in the graphene-dielectric layered structure or by increasing the layer number of graphene sheets. Published version

We present a theoretical investigation of dispersive wave (DW) generation in nonlinear metamaterials (MMs). The role of the anomalous self-steepening (SS) effect, which can be either positive or negative, and the negative SS parameter can have a very large value compared to an ordinary positive-index material, in DW generation is particularly identified. It is demonstrated that the SS effect exerts a great impact on the peak power while has little effect on the frequency shift of DW. For positive third-order dispersion (TOD), the negative SS broadens the pulse spectrum and weakens the DW’s peak power significantly, opposite to the case of positive SS. For negative TOD, however, the negative SS narrows the pulse spectrum and enhances the DW’s peak power, also opposite to the case of positive SS. The results suggest that the DW generation in nonlinear MMs can be manipulated by SS effect to a large extent.

An ultrasensitive biosensor based on hybrid structure and composed of long-range surface plasmon polariton (LRSPP) and dielectric planar waveguide (PWG) modes is proposed. Both PWG and LRSPP modes have strong resonances to form strong coupling between the two modes, and the two modes can couple to enhance sensitivity of sensors. In the hybrid structure, PWG is composed of cytop–Si–cytop multilayers and the LRSPP configuration is composed of cytop–metal–sensing medium multilayer slabs. The highest imaging sensitivities of 2264 and 3619 RIU−1 were realized in the proposed sensors based on Au and Al-monolayer graphene, respectively, which are nearly 1.2 and 1.9 times larger than the 1910 RIU−1 sensitivity of the conventional LRSPR sensor (LRSPP sensor). Moreover, it is demonstrated that the PWG-coupled LRSPP biosensor is applicable to the sensing medium, with refractive index in the vicinity of 1.34.

An ultra-high sensitivity graphene optical sensor based on the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is proposed using the graphene-aluminum (Al)-graphene sandwich-like structure. Here, the graphene sheets are introduced for enhancing the SPR and preventing the oxidation. It is found that our proposed graphene optical sensor is 3.4 times more sensitive than the Al-based sensor without the graphene layers. We demonstrate that a higher sensitivity can be obtained at the short wavelength due to the increases of the sensitivity with the decreases of wavelength. Especially, the sensitivity can be enhanced marked by increasing the number of graphene layers, which is totally different from the previous graphene-based optical sensor where the sensitivity is often decreased with the increases of the number of graphene layers.

In this article, we have theoretically demonstrated that the perfect absorption at infrared frequencies can be achieved and controlled by using a graphene-hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) hyper crystal. hBN, the latest natural hyperbolic material, can be regarded as an excellent substrate to form a hyper crystal with graphene. Although the perfect absorption by a half-space of hBN crystal can be achieved due to its high optical anisotropy, but the perfect absorption can only appear at certain fixed wavenumber and incidence angle. By introducing a graphene-hBN hyper crystal, we can get perfect absorption at different wavenumbers and incidence angles by varying the Fermi energy level of graphene sheets via electrostatic biasing. We show that the perfect absorption can be realized at different Fermi energies for TM waves.

We theoretically demonstrate the perfect absorption phenomena in the hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) crystals in the mid-infrared wavelength ranges by means of critical coupling with a one-dimensional photonic crystal spaced by the air. Different from the polymer absorbing layer composed by a metal-dielectric composite film, the hyperbolic dispersion characteristics of hBN can meet the condition of critical coupling and achieve the total absorption in the mid-infrared wavelength ranges. However, the critical coupling phenomenon can only appear in the hBN crystals with the type II dispersion. Moreover, we discuss the influence of the thickness of hBN, the incident angle, and the thickness and permittivity of the space dielectric on the total absorption. Ultimately, the conditions for absorption enhancement and the optimization methods of perfect absorption are proposed, and the design rules for a totally absorbing system under the different conditions are achieved.

In this paper, we propose a modified Otto configuration to realize tunable and low-threshold optical bistability at terahertz frequencies by attaching multilayer graphene sheets to a nonlinear substrate interface. Our work demonstrates that the threshold of optical bistability can be markedly reduced (three orders of magnitude) by covering the nonlinear substrate with multilayer graphene sheets, due to strong local field enhancement with the excitation of surface plasmons. We present the influences of the Fermi energy of graphene, the incident angle, the thickness of air gap and the relaxation time of graphene on the hysteresis phenomenon and give a way to optimize the surface plasmon resonance, which will enable us to further lower the minimal power requirements for realizing optical bistability due to the strong interaction of light with graphene sheets. These results are promising for realization of terahertz optical switches, optical modulators and logical devices.