Quantum Electrodynamics is Crucial for Plasmonic Resonance of Metallic Nanostructures

Abstract

Plasmonic resonance of a metallic nanostructure results from coherent motion of its conduction electrons driven by incident light. At the resonance, the induced dipole in the nanostructure is proportional to the number of the conduction electrons, hence $10^7$ times larger than that in an atom. The interaction energy between the induced dipole and fluctuating virtual field of the incident light can reach a few tenths of an eV. Therefore, the classical electromagnetism dominating the field becomes inadequate. We argue that quantum electrodynamics (QED) should be used instead as the fundamental theory to describe the virtual field and its interaction with the electrons. Based on QED, we derive analytic expressions for the plasmonic resonant frequency, which depends on three easily accessible material parameters. The analytic theory reproduces very well the experimental data, and can be used for rational design of materials.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Observation of intrinsic size effects in the optical response of individual gold nanoparticles
• Resonance shifts and spill-out effects in self-consistent hydrodynamic nanoplasmonics
• Engineered Optical Nonlocality in Nanostructured Metamaterials
• Localized surface plasmon resonance in silver nanoparticles: Atomistic first-principles time-dependent density-functional theory calculations
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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Decay dynamics of Localised Surface Plasmons: damping of coherences and populations of the oscillatory plasmon modes