Plasmon-phonon Strongly-Coupled Mode in Epitaxial Graphene

Abstract

We report the dispersion measurements, using angle-resolved reflection electron-energy-loss-spectroscopy (AREELS), on two-dimensional (2D) plasmons in single and multilayer graphene which couple strongly to surface optical phonon (FK phonon) modes of silicon carbide substrate. The coupled modes show discrete dispersion behaviors in the single and bilayer graphene. With increasing graphene layers on SiC(0001), a transition from plasmon-like dispersion to phonon-like dispersion is observed. For plasmon-like modes, the dispersion is strongly damped by electron-hole pair excitations at entering single-particle continuum, while phonon-like mode is undamped. In the region free of coupling, the graphene 2D plasmon exhibits acoustic behavior with linear dispersion with slope and damping determined by the Fermi surface topology.