title: Self-focusing of femtosecond surface plasmon polaritons.
abstract: We study the propagation of femtosecond pulses in nonlinear metal-dielectric plasmonic waveguiding structures by employing the finite-difference time-domain numerical method. Self-focusing of plasmon pulses is observed for defocusing Kerr-like nonlinearity of the dielectric medium due to normal dispersion. We compare the nonlinear propagation of plasmon pulses along a single metal-dielectric interface with the propagation within a metal-dielectric-metal slot waveguide and observe that nonlinear effects are more pronounced for the single surface where longer propagation length may compensate for lower field confinement.
authors: Blackett Laboratory, Department of Physics, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK.
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Pusch
authors: Ilya V
authors: IV
authors: Shadrivov
authors: Ortwin
authors: O
authors: Hess
authors: Yuri S
authors: YS
authors: Kivshar