Active Tuning and Anisotropic Strong Coupling of Terahertz Polaritons in Van der Waals Heterostructures

Abstract

Electromagnetic field confinement is significant in enhancing light-matter interactions as well as in reducing footprints of photonic devices especially in Terahertz (THz). Polaritons offer a promising platform for the manipulation of light at the deep sub-wavelength scale. However, traditional THz polariton materials lack active tuning and anisotropic propagation simultaneously. In this paper, we design a graphene/α-MoO3 heterostructure and simulate polariton hybridization between isotropic graphene plasmon polaritons and anisotropic α-MoO3 phonon polaritons. The physical fundamentals for polariton hybridizations depend on the evanescent fields coupling originating from the constituent materials as well as the phase match condition, which can be severely affected by the α-MoO3 thickness and actively tuned by the gate voltages. Hybrid polaritons propagate with in-plane anisotropy that exhibit momentum dispersion characterized by elliptical, hyperboloidal and even flattened iso-frequency contours (IFCs) in the THz range. Our results provide a tunable and flexible anisotropic polariton platform for THz sensing, imaging, and modulation.