Control of the stability and soliton formation of dipole moments in a nonlinear plasmonic finite nanoparticle array

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability and soliton formation in a finite nonlinear plasmonic nanoparticle array under optical excitation, revealing critical points, stability conditions, and novel dark soliton states with potential sensing applications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of stability and soliton formation in finite nanoparticle arrays, highlighting differences from infinite systems and introducing new dark soliton configurations.

Findings

Identification of a critical point where the low bistable branch becomes unstable.

Formation of dark dipole solitons under specific external fields.

Potential application of double monopole dark solitons in high-precision detection.

Abstract

We perform numerical analysis of a finite nanoparticle array, in which the transversal dipolar polarizations are excited by a homogenous optical field. Considering the linearly long-range dipole-dipole interaction and the cubic dipole nonlinearity of particle, the characteristics of stability of a finite number nanoparticle array should be revised, compared with that of an infinite number nanoparticle array. A critical point in the low branch of the bistable curve is found, beyond which the low branch becomes unstable for a finite number of nanoparticles. The influence of the external field intensities and detuning frequencies on this critical point are investigated in detail. When the total number of particles approaches infinity, our results become similar to that of an infinity number particle system [cf. Ref.32]. Notably, with appropriate external optical field, a dark dipole soliton is formed. Moreover, when the scaled detuning is set to an appropriate value, a double monopole dark soliton (DMDS) consisting of two particles is formed. The DMDS may have potential applications in the subwavelength highly precise detection because of its very small width.