Time-dependent transport of a localized surface plasmon through a linear array of metal nanoparticles: Precursor and normal mode contributions

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the time-dependent transport of a localized surface plasmon excitation through a linear array of identical and equidistantly spaced metal nanoparticles. Two different signals propagating through the array are found: one traveling with the group velocity of the surface plasmon polaritons of the system and damped exponentially, and the other running with the speed of light and decaying in a power-~law fashion, as $x^{-1}$ and $x^{-2}$ for the transversal and longitudinal polarizations, respectively. The latter resembles the Sommerfeld-Brillouin forerunner and has not been identified in previous studies. The contribution of this signal dominates the plasmon transport at large distances. In addition, even though this signal is spread in the propagation direction and has the lateral dimension larger than the wavelength, the field profile close to the chain axis does not change with distance, indicating that this part of the signal is confined to the array.

arXiv comment13 pages, 10 figures, to be published in PRB

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Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Topological plasmons in dimerized chains of nanoparticles: robustness against long-range quasistatic interactions and retardation effects
• Plasmons in two-dimensional lattices of near-field coupled nanoparticles
• Quantum theory of plasmon polaritons in chains of metallic nanoparticles: From near- to far-field coupling regime