One of the most important component of integrated photonics is a class of devices known as light modulation devices, which allow us to modulate and manipulate the flow of light, similar to the role transistor played in electronics. Only recently introduced, but graphene have shown incredible promises as a "miracle" material in electronics, with properties ranging from zero band gap, very high electrical mobility, ultra broadband optical responses, and the ability to drastically modify its optical properties through chemical or electrical doping.
In this dissertation, the author presented several unique nanostructures to exploit the aforementioned graphene characteristics to create light modulation devices with superior performance characteristics. Novel effects including wide angle extraordinary reflection causes by epsilon near zero effect and wide angle extraordinary transmission causes by coupling of plasmonic supermodes, phase modulation with near unity amplitude transmission with all pass filter, and graphene perfect absorber with a coupled system of dual mode/single mode resonator was thoroughly investigated, theoretically and numerically. The effects was also presented in practical nanostructures better suited for applications, which are also numerically investigated with various numerical methods.
