Phonon-Plasmon Interaction in Metal-Insulator-Metal Localized Surface Plasmon Systems

TL;DR

This paper explores the interaction between elastic vibrations and localized surface plasmon modes in a gold nanocylinder-gold film system, combining theoretical, numerical, and analytical approaches to understand and quantify phonon-plasmon coupling.

Contribution

It introduces a simple analytical model for plasmon modes and investigates the efficiency of phonon-plasmon coupling in a gold nanostructure system through comprehensive simulations.

Findings

Analytical model accurately reproduces plasmon mode wavelengths.

Coupling efficiency assessed via resonance wavelength modulation.

Time-dependent transmission spectra demonstrate effective acousto-plasmonic interaction.

Abstract

We investigate theoretically and numerically the coupling between elastic and localized surface plasmon modes in a system of gold nanocylinders separated from a thin gold film by a dielectric spacer of few nanometers thickness. That system supports plasmon modes confined in between the bottom of the nanocylinder and the top of the gold film, which arise from the formation of interference patterns by short-wavelength metal-insulator-metal propagating plasmon. First we present the plasmonic properties of the system though computer-simulated extinction spectra and field maps associated to the different optical modes. Next a simple analytical model is introduced, which allows to correctly reproduce the shape and wavelengths of the plasmon modes. This model is used to investigate the efficiency of the coupling between an elastic deformation and the plasmonic modes. In the last part of the paper, we present the full numerical simulations of the phononic properties of the system, and then compute the acousto-plasmonic coupling between the different plasmon modes and five acoustic modes of very different shape. The efficiency of the coupling is assessed first by evaluating the modulation of the resonance wavelength, which allows comparison with the analytical model, and finally in term of time-modulation of the transmission spectra on the full visible range, computed for realistic values of the deformation of the nanoparticle.