title: Intrinsic optical properties and enhanced plasmonic response of epitaxial silver.
abstract: Using atomically smooth epitaxial silver films, new optical permittivity highlighting significant loss reduction in the visible frequency range is extracted. Largely enhanced propagation distances of surface plasmon polaritons are measured, confirming the low intrinsic loss in silver. The new permittivity is free of extrinsic spectral features associated with grain boundaries and localized plasmons inevitably present in thermally deposited films.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712; Department of Physics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208.
authors.forename: Yanwen
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Chengdong
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: N Mohammadi
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Estakhri
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Jisun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Xing-Xiang
authors.initials: XX
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Greg K
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Pribil
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alù
authors.forename: Chih-Kang
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Shih
authors.forename: Xiaoqin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: ellipsometry; epitaxial growth; optical constants; plasmon