0000000000144619
AUTHOR
Paul Dawson
The interaction of surface plasmon polaritons with a silver film edge.
A prism coupling arrangement is used to excite surface plasmons at the surface of a thin silver film and a photon scanning tunnelling microscope is used to detect the evanescent field above the silver surface. Excitation of the silver/air mode of interest is performed at lambda1 = 632.8 nm using a tightly focused beam, while the control of the tip is effected by exciting a counter-propagating surface plasmon field at a different wavelength, lambda2 = 543.5 nm, using an unfocused beam covering a macroscopic area. Propagation of the red surface plasmon is evidenced by an exponential tail extending away from the launch site, but this feature is abruptly truncated if the surface plasmon encount…
Surface plasmon polariton propagation across a gentle silver step
Abstract Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are excited with light of wavelength λ1=632.8 nm on or near a gentle Ag/Ag step structure using focused beam, prism coupling and detected using a bare, sharpened fibre tip. The tip–sample separation is controlled by means of an evanescent optical field at wavelength λ2=543.5 nm in a photon scanning tunnelling microscope (PSTM). The SPP propagation properties are first characterised on both the thin and thick sections of the Ag film structure either side of the step, both macroscopically, using attenuated total reflection, and microscopically from the PSTM images; the two techniques yield very good agreement. It is found that the SPP propagation len…
Surface plasmon polariton propagation length: A direct comparison using photon scanning tunneling microscopy and attenuated total reflection
The propagation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP's) is studied using a photon scanning tunneling microscope (PSTM) and conventional attenuated total reflection (ATR). The PSTM experiment uses localized (focused beam) launching of SPP's at a wavelength of 632.8 nm. Propagation of the SPP is observed as an exponentially decaying tail beyond the launch site and the $1/e$ propagation length is measured directly for a series of Ag films of different thicknesses. The ATR measurements are used to characterize the thin film optical and thickness parameters, revealing, notably, the presence of a contaminating adlayer of ${\mathrm{Ag}}_{2}\mathrm{S}$ of typical dielectric function, $8.7+i2.7,$ and …
Imaging of surface plasmon propagation and edge interaction using a photon scanning tunneling microscope
We report the direct imaging of surface plasmon propagation on thin silver films using the photon scanning tunneling microscope. It is found that the surface plasmon remains tightly confined in the original launch direction with insignificant scattering to other momentum states. A propagation length of 13.2 \ensuremath{\mu}m is measured at \ensuremath{\lambda}=632.8 nm. We also present images showing the interaction of a surface plasmon with the edge of the metal film supporting it. The most remarkable feature is the absence of specularly reflected beam.