title: Imaging of plasmonic modes of silver nanoparticles using high-resolution cathodoluminescence spectroscopy.
abstract: Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy has been performed on silver nanoparticles in a scanning electron microscopy setup. Peaks appearing in the visible range for particles fabricated on silicon substrate are shown to arrive from excitation of out-of-plane eigenmodes by the electron beam. Monochromatic emission maps have been shown to resolve spatial field variation of resonant plasmon mode on length scale smaller than 25 nm. Finite-difference time-domain numerical simulations are performed for both the cases of light excitation and electron excitation. The results of radiative emission under electron excitation show an excellent agreement with experiments. A complete vectorial description of induced field is given, which complements the information obtained from experiments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering, University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Pratik
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chaturvedi
authors.forename: Keng H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Anil
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Kin Hung
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Fung
authors.forename: James C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Mabon
authors.forename: Nicholas X
authors.initials: NX
authors.lastname: Fang