Surface Plasmon Polariton Self-Focusing by Ponderomotive Forces

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nonlinear electron plasma effects in metals can cause surface plasmon polaritons to self-focus, potentially improving nanoplasmonic device performance through reduced losses and spectrum modifications.

Contribution

It introduces a fluid-mechanics plasma model to describe electron nonlinearities and demonstrates surface plasmon self-focusing due to ponderomotive forces with preliminary experimental validation.

Findings

Self-focusing of surface plasmon polaritons observed

Reduction in propagation losses due to field confinement

Nonlinear spectrum modifications demonstrated

Abstract

Nonlinear properties of Surface Plasmon Polaritons stemming from the inherent electron plasma nonlinearity of the metal layers are investigated. A fluid-mechanics plasma model is used to describe the electron motion in metals. The nonlinear ponderomotive force repels the electrons from the high field intensity region, effectively reducing the local plasma frequency and the corresponding real part of the refractive index results in Kerr like self-focusing. The field confinement to the low carrier density region also assists also in reducing the propagation losses, which usually inhibit practical nanoplasmonic circuits. Surface plasmon self focusing and nonlinear spectrum modifications, predicted by our model, are demonstrated by preliminary experiments.