Experimental signatures of the transition from acoustic plasmon to electronic sound in graphene.

Fermi liquids respond differently to perturbations depending on whether their frequency is higher (collisionless regime) or lower (hydrodynamic regime) than the interparticle collision rate. This results in a different phase velocity between the collisionless zero sound and the hydrodynamic first sound. We performed terahertz photocurrent nanoscopy measurements on graphene devices, with a metallic gate close to the graphene layer, to probe the dispersion of propagating acoustic plasmons, the counterpart of sound modes in electronic Fermi liquids. We report the observation of a change in the plasmon phase velocity when the excitation frequency approaches the electron-electron collision rate that is compatible with the transition between the zero and the first sound mode.

Few-Electron Ultrastrong Light-Matter Coupling at 300 GHz with Nanogap Hybrid LC Microcavities.

Ultrastrong light-matter coupling allows the exploration of new states of matter through the interaction of strong vacuum fields with huge electronic dipoles. By using hybrid dipole antenna-split ring resonator-based cavities with extremely small effective mode volumes Veff/λ03 ≃ 6 × 10-10 and surfaces Seff/λ02 ≃ 3.5 × 10-7, we probe the ultrastrong light-matter coupling at 300 GHz to less than 100 electrons located in the last occupied Landau level of a high mobility two-dimensional electron gas, measuring a normalized coupling ratio of ΩR/ωc = 0.36. Effects of the extremely reduced cavity dimensions are observed as the light-matter coupled system is better described by an effective mass heavier than the uncoupled one. These results open the way to ultrastrong coupling at the single-electron level in two-dimensional electron systems.

Low-bias active control of terahertz waves by coupling large-area CVD graphene to a terahertz metamaterial.

We propose an hybrid graphene/metamaterial device based on terahertz electronic split-ring resonators directly evaporated on top of a large-area single-layer CVD graphene. Room temperature time-domain spectroscopy measurements in the frequency range from 250 GHz to 2.75 THz show that the presence of the graphene strongly changes the THz metamaterial transmittance on the whole frequency range. The graphene gating allows active control of such interaction, showing a modulation depth of 11.5% with an applied bias of 10.6 V. Analytical modeling of the device provides a very good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the measured device behavior. The presented system shows potential as a THz modulator and can be relevant for strong light-matter coupling experiments.