Analysis of the self-imaging effect in plasmonic multimode waveguides.

We present studies on the propagation of plasmon waves in metallic multimode waveguides surrounded by a dielectric medium. The permittivity of the metal was determined by a Drude model. The propagation was simulated by the method of lines. The propagating field exhibited the well-known self-imaging phenomenon known as the Talbot effect. The metallic waveguides are lossy. The influence of various parameters on the losses was examined. By a suitable choice of parameters, propagation distances of several Talbot periods are possible. Our investigation also includes simulations for the propagation of eigenmodes of the waveguides and results for the calculation of the effective index.