Control of gain/absorption in tunable hyperbolic metamaterials

In this paper, the possibility of shaping the gain/absorption spectrum in tunable hyperbolic metamaterial (THMM) composed of subsequent layers of graphene and active/passive material by external biasing is demonstrated. For the first time it has been shown that resonance transitions between different dispersion regimes, i.e., Type I HMM→elliptic, elliptic→Type II HMM, elliptic→Type I HMM, are accompanied by interesting optical effects, such as anisotropic effective gain/absorption enhancement or electromagnetic transparency, all controllable by external voltage. We believe that this kind of tunable metamaterial could lay the foundation for a new class of active/passive media with controllable gain/absorption or electromagnetic transparency.