Enhanced Faraday rotation in magnetophotonic crystal infiltrated with graphene

We investigate the Faraday rotation angle of a bilayer structure composed of graphene and SiC using the transfer matrix method and find that the cyclotron resonance frequency is highly sensitive to the magnetic field due to the Dirac quasiparticles characteristics of graphene. As a truly single atomic sheet, the giant Faraday rotation angle in graphene originates from its two dimensional free carriers distributions. Compared to the bilayer structure in experiments, further enhancement in the Faraday rotation can be achieved in a designed magnetophotonic crystal infiltrated with graphene because of graphene's nonreciprocity. The sensitivity of the optical conductivity of graphene on the magnetic field indicates its possibility of realizing tunable magnetooptical effects. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3605593]