title: Surface plasmons and singularities.
abstract: We apply the conformal transformation technique to study systematically a variety of singular plasmonic structures, including two-dimensional sharp edges, rough surfaces, and nanocrescents. These structures are shown to exhibit two distinct features. First, different from a planar metallic surface, the surface plasmon excitations on the examined structures have a lower bound cutoff at a finite frequency; second, the electric field diverges below a critical frequency even when metallic losses are considered. For rough surfaces and open-crescent nanostructures, the influence of the structure shapes on the absorbance characteristics is also discussed. Our analysis gives a unique insight into the light capture process on singular structures and holds the promise of detection of single molecules and greatly enhanced nonlinear effects.
authors.affiliation: The Blackett Laboratory, Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK. y.luo09@imperial.ac.uk
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Pendry
authors.forename: Alexandre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aubry