Abstract

Strong circularly polarized excitation opens up the possibility to generate and control effective magnetic fields in solid state systems, e.g., via the optical inverse Faraday effect or the phonon inverse Faraday effect. While these effects rely on material properties that can be tailored only to a limited degree, plasmonic resonances can be fully controlled by choosing proper dimensions and carrier concentrations. Plasmon resonances provide new degrees of freedom that can be used to tune or enhance the light-induced magnetic field in engineered metamaterials. Here we employ graphene disks to demonstrate light-induced transient magnetic fields from a plasmonic circular current with extremely high efficiency. The effective magnetic field at the plasmon resonance frequency of the graphene disks (3.5 THz) is evidenced by a strong ( ~ 1°) ultrafast Faraday rotation ( ~ 20 ps). In accordance with reference measurements and simulations, we estimated the strength of the induced magnetic field to be on the order of 0.7 T under a moderate pump fluence of about 440 nJ cm−2.

The authors provide an experimental demonstration of magnetic field generation in graphene disks via the inverse Faraday effect. When the disks are illuminated with circularly polarized radiation in resonance with the graphene plasmon frequency, the corresponding rotational motion of the charge carriers gives rise to a unipolar magnetic field.

Details

Title
Strong transient magnetic fields induced by THz-driven plasmons in graphene disks
Author
Han, Jeong Woo 1 ; Sai, Pavlo 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; But, Dmytro B. 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Uykur, Ece 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Winnerl, Stephan 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kumar, Gagan 4 ; Chin, Matthew L. 5 ; Myers-Ward, Rachael L. 6 ; Dejarld, Matthew T. 6 ; Daniels, Kevin M. 5 ; Murphy, Thomas E. 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Knap, Wojciech 2 ; Mittendorff, Martin 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Universität Duisburg-Essen, Fakultät für Physik, Duisburg, Germany (GRID:grid.5718.b) (ISNI:0000 0001 2187 5445) 
 CENTERA Laboratories, Institute of High Pressure Physics PAS, Warsaw, Poland (GRID:grid.425122.2) (ISNI:0000 0004 0497 7361) 
 Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Dresden, Germany (GRID:grid.40602.30) (ISNI:0000 0001 2158 0612) 
 Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India (GRID:grid.417967.a) (ISNI:0000 0004 0558 8755) 
 University of Maryland, College Park, USA (GRID:grid.164295.d) (ISNI:0000 0001 0941 7177) 
 U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, USA (GRID:grid.89170.37) (ISNI:0000 0004 0591 0193) 
Pages
7493
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2891383712
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2023. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.