surface plasmon polaritons sculptured nematic thin films surface plasmon resonance
Abstract:
A sculptured nematic thin film (SNTF) is an assembly of parallel nanowires that are shaped in a fixed plane orthogonal to the substrate on hich the film is deposited. The absorbance, reflectance, and transmittance of a linearly polarized, obliquely incident plane wave were calculated for a planar metal/SNTF interface in the Kretschmann configuration, the wave vector of the plane wave being arbitrarily oriented with respect to the morphologically significant plane of the SNTF. The permittivity profile of the chosen SNTF was supposed to have been sculptured
during physical vapor deposition by varying the vapor incidence angle sinusoidally about a mean value. Calculations revealed that (i) multiple surface-plasmon-polariton (SPP) trains of the same color can be independently launched at the metal/SNTF interface, (ii) not all
SPP trains have to be co-propagating, and (iii) not all SPP trains have to be of the same
linear polarization state. As different SPP trains move along the interface with different speeds, exciting prospects emerge for error-free sensing and plasmonics-based communication.
