Resonant quenching of plasmon energy dissipation in a metal film with nonlocal dielectric response

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a resonant phenomenon in nonlocal metal films where energy dissipation is quenched, enabling near-zero-loss plasmonic waveguides with nanometer-scale confinement.

Contribution

It introduces the resonant quenching of energy dissipation (RQED) in nonlocal metal films and explores its potential for low-loss plasmonic waveguide design.

Findings

RQED occurs at specific wave numbers satisfying a resonance condition.

RQED is effective in films with thicknesses around the nonlocality scale length.

The effect disappears in films thicker than a cutoff or with local dielectric response.

Abstract

Evanescent waves in a metal thin film with nonlocality are found to propagate in normal direction to film surface with quenched (to zero) energy dissipation associated with intra-band electron transitions when wave numbers satisfy a resonant condition. It is shown that resonant quenching of energy dissipation (RQED) effect occurs in metal films with thicknesses of less or larger than, but still on the order of, the nonlocality scale length. RQED ceases to exist in metal films whose thickness exceeds a cutoff length or in metal films with local dielectric permittivity. Resonant quenching of energy dissipation is caused by destructive interference of partial contributions to electric displacement field, spatially dispersed over thin film thickness. It is demonstrated that RQED effect can be used for designing a new type of plasmonic waveguides, such as a slit waveguide representing a metal film with a narrow slit filled with a dielectric, to achieve near zero propagation losses for plasmonic modes with few nanometer scale confinement.