English

Why metallic surfaces with grooves a few nanometers deep and wide may strongly absorb visible light

Other Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v2

Abstract

It is theoretically shown that nanometric silver lamellar gratings present very strong visible light absorption inside the grooves, leading to electric field intensities by several orders of magnitude larger than that of the impinging light. This effect, due to the excitation of long wave vector surface plasmon polaritons with particular small penetration depth in the metal, may explain the abnormal optical absorption observed a long time ago on almost flat Ag films. Surface enhanced Raman scattering in rough metallic films could also be due to the excitation of such plasmon polaritons in the grain boundaries or notches of the films.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0706.3840,
  title  = {Why metallic surfaces with grooves a few nanometers deep and wide may strongly absorb visible light},
  author = {J. Le Perchec and P. Quemerais and A. Barbara and T. Lopez-Rios},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0706.3840},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

5 pages, 5 figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett