A Graphene based bimetallic plasmonic waveguide to increase photorefractive effect

In this paper, for enhancement of the nonlinear optical properties of photorefractive gain, a novel plasmonic waveguide is proposed. The geometry of the proposed structure is optimized to reach the highest photorefractive gain. The proposed structure is based on bimetallic structure and it includes a graphene layer. It is shown that a strong mode can be coupled to a weak mode by means of photorefractive effect. It is found that comparing with the conventional symmetric and asymmetric metal-insulator-metal plasmonic waveguides, the proposed structure with different metals and a graphene layer with an optimized notch has higher photorefractive gain and longer propagation distance, the distance for which a net photorefractive gain exists. The effect of the crystal thickness and amplitude inputs are also analyzed. It is found that there is an optimum crystal thickness that yields the maximum photorefractive gain.