Graphene Photonics and Plasmonics

Graphene has been intensively explored by physicists and engineers due to its unique photonic and electronics properties. In this talk, I will first address the physics of light-graphene interaction within the single-electron framework, followed by a discussion of light excitation of collective oscillations of the carriers, i.e., plasmons in graphene. I will cover a variety of photonic devices based on these two mechanisms of lightgraphene interaction, such as high-bandwidth photodetectors, optical modulators, electro-magnetic wave shielding, optical filters, and linear polarizers. Finally I will discuss a few promising future research directions on photonics using graphene and other two-dimensional materials