Harmonics radiation of graphene surface plasmon polaritons in terahertz regime

• An approach to extract terahertz radiation from graphene surface plasmon polaritons is presented.
• A sidewall configuration is proposed to lift the surface plasmon mode.
• Harmonics of surface plasmon polaritons are possible to radiate.

This letter presents an approach to extract terahertz radiation from surface plasmon polaritons excited in the surface of a uniform graphene structure by an electron beam. A sidewall configuration is proposed to lift the surface plasmon mode to be close to the light line, so that some of its harmonics have chances to go above the light line and become radiative. The harmonics are considered to be excited by a train of periodic electron bunches. The physical mechanism in this scheme is analyzed with three-dimensional theory, and the harmonics excitation and radiation are demonstrated through numerical calculations. The results show that this technique could be an alternative to transform the surface plasmon polaritons into radiation.