Reststrahl band-assisted photocurrents in epitaxial graphene layers

We report on the observation of the reststrahl band-assisted photocurrents in epitaxial graphene on SiC excited by infrared radiation. The peculiar spectral dependence for frequencies lying within the reststrahl band of the SiC substrate provides a direct and noninvasive way to probe the electric field magnitude at atomic distances from the material's surface. Furthermore our results reveal that nonlinear optical and optoelectronic phenomena in two-dimensional crystals and other atomic scale structures can be giantly enhanced by their deposition on a substrate with negative dielectric constant.