Multi-plasmon absorption in graphene

Abstract

We show that graphene possesses a strong nonlinear optical response in the form of multi-plasmon absorption, with exciting implications in classical and quantum nonlinear optics. Specifically, we predict that graphene nano-ribbons can be used as saturable absorbers with low saturation intensity in the far-infrared and terahertz spectrum. Moreover, we predict that two-plasmon absorption and extreme localization of plasmon fields in graphene nano-disks can lead to a plasmon blockade effect, in which a single quantized plasmon strongly suppresses the possibility of exciting a second plasmon.