Surface plasmon su8bwavelength optics: principles and novel effects

Surface plasmons are waves that propagate along the surface of a conductor. By altering the structure of a metal's surface, the properties of surface plasmons, such as their dispersion, modes, and the coupling effect, can be significantly changed. In particular their interaction with light can be controlled and tailored, which offers the potential for developing new types of photonic deviceses. This could lead to miniaturized photonic circuits with length scales that are much smaller than those currently achieved. Plasmonics has become one of the frontierfields of research. The principles, novel effects, and physical mechanisms of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are attracting wide interest due to bright prospects of potential applications in subwavelength optics, data storage, light generation, microscopy and bio-photonics. The basic principles of SPPs, their novel phenomena, and some potential applications are introduced in this review. (authors)