Dynamical switching of electromagnetically induced reflectance in complementary terahertz metamaterials

Active manipulation of group delay of electromagnetic waves is highly desirable for telecommunications and information processing. However, most control means of the group delay currently demonstrated experimentally in the artificial metamaterials require different external excitations necessitating complex setups. Here, electrical manipulation of resonance strength of electromagnetically induced reflectance (EIR) are theoretically and numerically demonstrated in a hybrid metal-graphene complementary metamaterial for actively tunable slow light applications. Combining a monolayer graphene with a metal-based complementary metamaterial composed of a dipole slot and a quadrupole slot, a sharp EIR window in the complementary structure is excited due to strong coupling between two resonators. As shifting the Fermi energy of graphene implanted under the dark mode resonator via electrostatic doping, the EIR window can realize an on-to-off switch, and the modulation depth of 73.3% for the EIR resonance strength is achieved with actively switchable group delay of 6.44 ps. Further investigations show that the active modulation can be attributed to the change in the damping rate of the dark mode caused by the tunable conductivity of graphene. This work provides an alternative way for innovative design and realization of dynamically controllable terahertz slow light devices, which may show potential applications in future terahertz wireless communications.