Tunability and Robustness of Dirac Points of Photonic Nanostructures

We study the tunability and robustness of photonic Dirac points (DPs) in plasmonic nanostructures. The tunability of the DP is demonstrated in graphene-based photonic superlattices by adjusting the graphene permittivity via the optical Kerr effect or electrical doping. The robustness of DPs is demonstrated in plasmonic lattices by showing that even very high levels of disorder are unable to localize the modes located near the DP. The robustness of the DP also manifests itself in the fact that the inversely-proportional dependence of the transmission on the lattice length near the DP remains unchanged under strong disorder.