Coupled Plasmonic Metallic Nanowires to Induce Localization of Surface Plasmon Polaritons

Abstract

We have studied the influence of the structural disorder on the spatial distribution of theplasmonic field and its propagation in one and two dimensional arrays of coupled metallicnanowires. By solving the three dimensional Maxwell equations we have studied theAnderson localization of surface Plasmon polaritions for arrays of metallic nanowires withvarying degree of the structural disorder. We have found that a random distribution of radii ofthe nanowires leaded to transverse spatial localization of collective surface plasmonicpolarition excitations. The characteristic spatial confinement of the plasmonic field foundsmaller than the optical wavelength which demonstrated that plasmonic structures can beemployed to implement the subwave length Anderson localization of the electromagneticfield. We have also found that influence of the metallic loss and the gain of the host mediumon the plasmonic Anderson localization modes, loss was compensated by the gain whosestrength was much smaller than the loss rate of the metallic component of the plasmonicarray. The obtained results were found in good agreement with previously obtained results.