The field in the gap of two plasmonic particles

The field in the gap between two plasmonic nanoparticle can be enhanced at LSPR in many times
and this enhancement is much larger than the file enhancement close to a single nanoparticle. Below
we provide some results of the exact numerical calculations and their brief discussion.

(a) (b) Electric field enhancement

z
E0 E0 d=1 nm
103
k
k
102
A Ag A Ag

101
z
d x
100
x
Field enhancement (@ point A)

2000
(c) (d)
100
1 nm Au Ag 1 nm

2 nm
1000
50
10 nm 2 nm
5 nm
5 nm 10 nm
0 0
400 500 600 700 800 300 400 500
Wavelength, nm Wavelength, nm

Figure 1: (a) Geometry of the nanodimer excitation. (b) The field enhancement distribution for a
silver nanodimer consisting of nanoparticles with R = 15 nm separated with a d = 1 nm gap. the
field enhancement in the middle of the gap (point A in Figure 1 (b)) shown for gold nanodimer (c)
and silver nanodimer (d).

In this geometry the field is oriented along the axis of the dimer (along x-axis according to
Fig. 1 (a)). In this geometry the field enhancement in the gap will be maximal, and the field will
be mainly concentrated in the gap between the particles. Indeed, one can see that in Fig. 1 (b)
where the field enhancement distribution is shown for a silver nanodimer with the gap of 1 nm (the
colorscale is logarithmic). The field in the gap is enhanced in up to 2000 times. However, for the gold
nanoparticles this enhancement is one order weaker (see Fig. 1 (c)). In accordance with the discussed
dipole model, the LSPR gets shifted in the longwavelength range with the decrease of nanoparticle
gap (see Fig. 1 (c) and (d)).
We need to stress that the observed field enhancement principally can not be described with any
dipole model. The reason for that is the strong nonlocality of the response and the excitation of the
higher multipolar modes, which give their contribution into field enhancement [1].

References
[1] A. Aubry, D. Y. Lei, S. A. Maier, and J. B. Pendry, “Interaction between Plasmonic Nanopar-
ticles Revisited with Transformation Optics”, Phys. Rev. Lett., 105 (23), 233901, 2010.