Optical dichroism by nonlinear excitations in graphene nanoribbons

The honeycomb carbon structure of graphene and nanotubes has a dynamics which can give rise to a spectrum. This can be excited via the interaction with an external electromagnetic field. In this work, nonlinear waves on graphene and nanotubes associated with the carbon structure are investigated using a gauge model. Typical energies are estimated and their scaling with the nanoribbon width investigated. Furthermore, the soliton-photon interaction depends on the incident photon polarization. In particular, we find that the nanoribbon is transparent when the polarization is along the largest length. Relying on the scaling with the width, we suggest a way to experimentally identify the soliton waves in nanoribbons.

Figure 1

Solutions (19) and (22) in arbitrary units. All constants were set to one and ${\zeta }_0=0$.