Open AccessAre scaling laws of sub-optical wavelength electric field confinement in arrays of metal nanoparticles related to plasmonics or to geometry?
Author(s) -
M. Essone Mezeme,
Christian Brosseau
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.20.017591
Subject(s) - electric field , plasmon , permittivity , wavelength , excitation , physics , optics , scaling , condensed matter physics , field (mathematics) , materials science , dielectric , optoelectronics , geometry , quantum mechanics , mathematics , pure mathematics
In this work, we describe finite element simulations of the plasmonic resonance (PLR) properties of a self-similar chain of plasmonic nanostructures. Using a broad range of conditions, we find strong numerical evidence that the electric field confinement behaves as (Ξ/λ)(PLR)[proporationality] EFE(-γ), where EFE is the electric field enhancement, Ξis the linear size of the focusing length, and λ is the wavelength of the resonant excitation. We find that the exponent γ is close to 1, i.e. significantly lower than the 1.5 found for two-dimensional nanodisks. This scaling law provides support for the hypothesis of a universal regime in which the sub-optical wavelength electric field confinement is controlled by the Euclidean dimensionality and is independent of nanoparticle size, metal nature, or embedding medium permittivity.