Lossless propagation of gain-compensated graphene plasmons

Abstract

Graphene supports surface plasmon polaritons with extreme field confinement and electrical tunability, but these waves are typically short-lived due to ohmic loss in the sheet. We show that embedding graphene in an active dielectric can counteract this loss and we derive closed-form design rules for lossless propagation within the local linear model. Specifically, from the full Maxwell model of a conductive sheet we obtain the gain values required to make the propagation constant real, $q''=0$, and we separately discuss the $r=0$ boundary obtained from the real part of the complex-index radicand. The formulas are expressed directly in terms of the complex conductivity of graphene and the surrounding media, making them easy to evaluate and implement. We verify the theory with full-wave simulations based on the finite element method in COMSOL, showing dispersion and attenuation/amplification trends with and without gain for single- and double-layer graphene plasmonic structures.