Plasmonic analog of electromagnetically induced transparency in nanostructure graphene

Graphene has shown intriguing optical properties as a new class of plasmonic material in the terahertz regime. In particular, plasmonic modes in graphene nanostructures can be confined to a spatial size that is hundreds of times smaller than their corresponding wavelengths in vacuum. Here, we show numerically that by designing graphene nanostructures in such deep-subwavelength scales, one can obtain plasmonic modes with the desired radiative properties such as radiative and dark modes. By placing the radiative and dark modes in the vicinity of each other, we further demonstrate electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), analogous to the atomic EIT. At the transparent window, there exist very large group delays, one order of magnitude larger than those offered by metal structures. The EIT spectrum can be further tuned electrically by applying a gate voltage. Our results suggest that the demonstrated EIT based on graphene plasmonics may offer new possibilities for applications in photonics. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America