Bandwidth-tunable absorption enhancement of visible and near-infrared light in monolayer graphene by localized plasmon resonances and their diffraction coupling

There are few phenomena in condensed matter physics that are defined only by the fundamental constants and do not depend on material parameters. Examples are the resistivity quantum, h/e2 (h is Planck's constant and e the electron charge), that appears in a variety of transport experiments and the magnetic flux quantum, h/e, playing an important role in the physics of superconductivity. By and large, sophisticated facilities and special measurement conditions are required to observe any of these phenomena. We show that the opacity of suspended graphene is defined solely by the fine structure constant, a = e2/hc feminine 1/137 (where c is the speed of light), the parameter that describes coupling between light and relativistic electrons and that is traditionally associated with quantum electrodynamics rather than materials science. Despite being only one atom thick, graphene is found to absorb a significant (pa = 2.3%) fraction of incident white light, a consequence of graphene's unique electronic structure.

We present experimental evidence of sharp spectral features in the optical response of 2D arrays of gold nanorods. A simple coupled dipole model is used to describe the main features of the observed spectral line shape. The resonance involves an interplay between the excitation of plasmons localized on the particles and diffraction resulting from the scattering by the periodic arrangement of these particles. We investigate this interplay by varying the particle size, aspect ratio, and interparticle spacing, and observe the effect on the position, width, and intensity of the sharp spectral feature.