Temperature and inhomogeneous background affect plasmons in four-layer graphene structures

We employ the random-phase approximation to investigate the effects of temperature and the inhomogeneity of background dielectric on the collective excitations and respective broadening functions in 4-MLG structures. Computations present that the systems have four plasmon modes, corresponding to one in-phase and three out-of-phase oscillations of charged particles. We obtain that plasmon frequency and respective broadening functions behave as increasing functions of temperature with sufficiently large wave vectors. Dissimilarly, in small wave vector regions, the increase in temperature slightly decreases plasmon energy, but further increases in temperature increase this parameter. In addition, as the separation increases, both plasmon frequency and broadening functions significantly reduce, and the inhomogeneity of the dielectric background strongly decreases plasmon energy and its loss. We observe that both temperature and the environment's inhomogeneity should be considered in calculations. •Four plasmon modes exist in the system.•Plasmon frequency and respective broadening functions increases with temperature at sufficiently large wave vectors.•With small wave vector, plasmon energy decreases and then increases with increasing temperature.•As The separation increases, both plasmon frequency and broadening functions significantly decrease.•The inhomogeneity of the dielectric background decreases strongly plasmon energy and its loss.