  The concept, analysis, and design of series switches for graphene-strip
plasmonic waveguides at near infrared frequencies are presented. Switching is
achieved by using graphene's field effect to selectively enable or forbid
propagation on a section of the graphene strip waveguide, thereby allowing good
transmission or high isolation, respectively. The electromagnetic modeling of
the proposed structure is performed using full-wave simulations and a
transmission line model combined with a matrix-transfer approach, which takes
into account the characteristics of the plasmons supported by the different
graphene-strip waveguide sections of the device. The performance of the switch
is evaluated versus different parameters of the structure, including
surrounding dielectric media, electrostatic gating and waveguide dimensions.
