This work analyzes how impurities and vacancies on the surface of a graphene sample affect its optical conductivity and plasmon excitations. The disorder is analyzed in the self-consistent Green's function formulation and nonlocal effects are fully taken into account. It is shown that impurities modify the linear spectrum and give rise to an impurity band whose position and width depend on the two parameters of our model, the density and the strength of impurities. The presence of the impurity band strongly influences the electromagnetic response and the plasmon losses. Furthermore, we discuss how the impurity-band position can be obtained experimentally from the plasmon dispersion relation and discuss this in the context of sensing.

• Received 12 November 2017
• Revised 6 February 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.97.085429