Giant Two-Photon Absorption in Bilayer Graphene

Abstract

We present a quantum perturbation theory on two-photon absorption (2PA) in monolayer and bilayer graphene which is Bernal-stacked. The theory shows that 2PA is significantly greater in bilayer graphene than monolayer graphene in the visible and infrared spectrum (up to 3 μm) with a resonant 2PA coefficient of up to ∼0.2 cm/W located at half of the bandgap energy, γ₁ = 0.4 eV. In the visible and terahertz region, 2PA exhibits a light frequency dependence of ω^–3 in bilayer graphene, while it is proportional to ω^–4 for monolayer graphene at all photon energies. Within the same order of magnitude, the 2PA theory is in agreement with our Z-scan measurements on high-quality epitaxial bilayer graphene deposited on SiC substrate at light wavelength of 780 and 1100 nm.