# Surface-assisted carrier excitation in plasmonic nanostructure

## TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum-mechanical model to analyze how surface-assisted processes enhance carrier excitation in plasmonic nanostructures, with implications for photovoltaics and photochemistry.

## Contribution

It introduces a new explicit expression for surface scattering and absorbed power that accounts for local field effects and polarization dependence in arbitrary-shaped nanostructures.

## Key findings

- Surface scattering is highly sensitive to local field polarization.
- The model links surface scattering to Landau damping in larger nanostructures.
- Provides a framework for calculating hot carrier generation rates.

## Abstract

We present a quantum-mechanical model for surface-assisted carrier excitation by optical fields in plasmonic nanostructures of arbitrary shape. We derive an explicit expression, in terms of local fields inside the metal structure, for surface absorbed power and surface scattering rate that determine the enhancement of carrier excitation efficiency near the metal-dielectric interface. We show that surface scattering is highly sensitive to the local field polarization, and can be incorporated into metal dielectric function along with phonon and impurity scattering. We also show that the obtained surface scattering rate describes surface-assisted plasmon decay (Landau damping) in nanostructures larger than the nonlocality scale. Our model can be used for calculations of plasmon-assisted hot carrier generation rates in photovoltaics and photochemistry applications.