Surface Plasmon Polariton Excitation in Time-modulated Media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that step-like time modulation in dispersive metals can actively excite and control surface plasmon polaritons, enabling dynamic plasmon manipulation in realistic, time-varying systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of exciting and controlling SPPs through temporal modulation, expanding beyond traditional spatial structuring techniques.

Findings

Time modulation enables launching and radiation of SPPs with tunable frequencies.

Simulation results show generation of time-reflected waves and magnetostatic modes.

Active control of plasmons is feasible in realistic, time-varying media.

Abstract

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are central to application areas such as sensing, energy harvesting, and nanoscale optics, and are typically excited via spatial structuring -- an approach lacking dynamic control. We demonstrate that step-like time modulation allows the excitation and out-coupling of SPPs through modulating a dispersive Drude-like metal thereby modelling realistic transparent conducting oxides; this establishes a pathway for the active control and extraction of plasmons in experimentally viable time-varying systems. Using finite-difference time-domain simulations we show that time modulation facilitates both the launching and radiation of surface plasmons with frequencies governed by the dispersion of the bounding media. Our results also reveal the generation of time-reflected waves and the emergence of a magnetostatic mode required for matching boundary conditions at the temporal interface.