Eur. Phys. J. B (2018) 91: 41
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80263-8

Regular Article

Giant Faraday rotation in graphene/MnF₂ photonic crystals

Key Laboratory for Photonic and Electronic Bandgap Materials, Ministry of Education, School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Harbin Normal University, Harbin 150025, P.R. China

^a e-mail: shufangfu1975@163.com

Received: 7 May 2017
Received in final form: 17 November 2017
Published online: 19 February 2018

Abstract

The effect of graphene on the Faraday rotation (FR) in dielectrics/antiferromagnetic photonic crystals (D/AF PCs) is investigated by using the forth-order transfer matrix, in which the graphene (Gr) is embedded on the surface of AF. When the incident light is vertical to the surface of D/Gr/AF PCs, Gr will present anisotropic properties, in which the optical conductivity is characterized by the tensor. The numerical simulations show that the FR angle almost is enhanced by one order compared with the ones of D/AF PCs when the number of D/Gr/AF in the PC is 9. In addition, the maxima and positions of the FR angles can be adjusted by changing the external magnetic field strength. On the other hand, the effects of the Fermi energy of Gr on the FR also are discussed since it can be tuned by controlling the applied back-gate voltage. These results may be valuable in the design of THz devices.