We demonstrate experimentally the generation and near-field imaging of nondiffracting surface waves, plasmonic Airy beams, propagating on the surface of a gold metal film. The Airy plasmons are excited by an engineered nanoscale phase grating, and demonstrate significant beam bending over their propagation. We show that the observed Airy plasmons exhibit self-healing properties, suggesting nove...

We study electromagnetic waves localized near a surface of a semi-infinite dielectric medium covered by a layer of graphene in the presence of a strong external magnetic field. We demonstrate that a novel type of hybrid TE–TM polarized surface plasmons can propagate along the graphene layer. We analyze the effect of the Hall conductivity on the polarization properties of these hybrid surface wa...

Recently, the surface plasmon coupled fluorescence (SPCF) phenomenon has become a rapidly progressive area of research in the field of analytical biosciences to understand biomolecular kinetics and binding events at interfaces. 10 SPCF spectroscopy is a more sensitive analytical tool with respect to the closely related surface plasmons resonance (SPR) technology. 13 Surface plasmons are coheren...

With strong spin-orbit coupling, topological insulators have an insulating bulk state, characterized by a band gap, and a conducting surface state, characterized by a Dirac cone. Plasmons in topological insulators show high frequency-tunability in the mid-infrared and terahertz spectral regions with transverse spin oscillations, also called “spin-plasmons”. This paper presents a discussion and ...

The coincidence in excitation energy between surface plasmons on silver and the GaN band gap is exploited to couple the semiconductor spontaneous emission into the metal surface plasmons. A 3-nm InGaN/GaN quantum well ~QW! is positioned 12 nm from an 8-nm silver layer, well within the surface plasmon fringing field depth. A spectrally sharp photoluminescence dip, by a factor '55, indicates that...

We report an excitation of surface plasmons in silver nanowires (AgNWs) which were embedded in flexible polymer nanofibers. Using waveguiding excitation, surface plasmons in AgNWs were excited and propagated. By directing light of 650, 532, and 473 nm wavelengths into the nanofiber, surface plasmons in an embedded single AgNW (average diameter 400 nm, length 4.3 μm) were excited and the corresp...

We propose an excitation method for the localization of photons at the apex of a metal coated axicon prism. The cone angle of the prism and the metallic film thickness are designed to match the excitation conditions for surface plasmons. The plasmons propagate along the sides of the prism and converge at its apex. The resulting nanofocusing was investigated by simulating the intensity distribut...

We demonstrate a novel way to actively tune surface plasmons by fabricating plasmonic nanostructures on stretchable elastomeric films. This allows reversible modification of the metal geometry on the nanometer scale. Using 100 nm scale Au nanoparticle dimers whose spacing is stretch-tuned reveals radically different spectral tuning than previously reported for sub-10-nm nanoparticles, but which...

Localized surface plasmons are confined collective oscillations of electrons in metallic nanoparticles. When driven by light, the optical response is dictated by geometrical parameters and the dielectric environment and plasmons are therefore extremely important for sensing applications. Plasmons in graphene disks have the additional benefit of being highly tunable via electrical stimulation. M...

The injection of a beam of free 50 keV electrons into an unstructured gold surface creates a highly localized source of traveling surface plasmons with spectra centered below the surface plasmon resonance frequency. The plasmons were detected by a controlled decoupling into light with a grating at a distance from the excitation point. The dominant contribution to the plasmon generation appears ...