Regular papers

Partially coherent surface plasmon modes

¹ Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica, INAOE, Departamento de Optica, Grupo de Optica Estadistica, Apdo. 51 y 216, C. P. 72000, Puebla, Mexico
² Universidad Juárez Autonoma de Tabasco, UJAT, C.P. 86040, Tabasco, Mexico

^* gmartin@inaoep.mx

Received: 22 November 2010

Abstract

Elementary long-range plasmon modes are described assuming an exponential dependence of the refractive index in the neighbourhood of the interface dielectric-metal thin film. The study is performed using coupling mode theory. The interference between two long-range plasmon modes generated that way allows the synthesis of surface sinusoidal plasmon modes, which can be considered as completely coherent generalized plasmon modes. These sinusoidal plasmon modes are used for the synthesis of new partially coherent surface plasmon modes, which are obtained by means of an incoherent superposition of sinusoidal plasmon modes where the period of each one is considered as a random variable. The kinds of surface modes generated have an easily tuneable profile controlled by means of the probability density function associated to the period. We show that partially coherent plasmon modes have the remarkable property to control the length of propagation which is a notable feature respect to the completely coherent surface plasmon mode. The numerical simulation for sinusoidal, Bessel, Gaussian and Dark Hollow plasmon modes are presented.