title: Breaking the mode degeneracy of surface plasmon resonances in a triangular system.
abstract: In this paper, we present a systematic investigation of symmetry-breaking in the plasmonic modes of triangular gold nanoprisms. Their geometrical C(3v) symmetry is one of the simplest possible that allows degeneracy in the particle's mode spectrum. It is reduced to the nondegenerate symmetries C(v) or E by positioning additional, smaller gold nanoprisms in close proximity, either in a lateral or a vertical configuration. Corresponding to the lower symmetry of the system, its eigenmodes also feature lower symmetries (C(v)), or preserve only the identity (E) as symmetry. We discuss how breaking the symmetry of the plasmonic system not only breaks the degeneracy of some lower order modes, but also how it alters the damping and eigenenergies of the observed Fano-type resonances.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Heisenbergstraße 3, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany. talebi@is.mpg.de
authors.forename: Nahid
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Talebi
authors.forename: Wilfried
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Sigle
authors.forename: Ralf
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vogelgesang
authors.forename: Christoph T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Koch
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fernández-López
authors.forename: Luis M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Liz-Marzán
authors.forename: Burcu
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ögüt
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rohm
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: van Aken