Effect of left-handed materials in surface plasmon excitation and propagation length

Abstract

We investigated the dispersion relation of surface plasmons (SPs) excited in a medium comprised of aleft-handed material (LHM) layer. We investigated different light polarizations in SP excitation along an LHM-metalinterface. We studied SP excitation through a classical Kretschmann geometry, employing an LHM interlayer betweena dielectric and a metal layer. Using this three-layer configuration, we investigated the effect of LHM medium oncharacterizing SP propagation length, which is directly related to the energy of the surface waves.