Spoof surface plasmon modes on doubly corrugated metal surfaces at terahertz frequencies

Spoof surface plasmons (SSPs) have many potential applications such as imaging and sensing, communications, innovative leaky wave antenna and many other passive devices in the microwave and terahertz (THz) spectrum. The extraordinary properties of SSPs (e.g. extremely strong near field, enhanced beam–wave interaction) make them especially attractive for developing novel THz electronic sources. SSP modes on doubly corrugated metal surfaces are investigated and analyzed both theoretically and numerically in this paper. The analytical SSP dispersion expressions of symmetric and anti-symmetric modes are obtained with a simplified modal field expansion method; the results are also verified by the finite integration method. Additionally, the propagation losses are also considered for real copper surfaces with a limited constant conductivity in a THz regime. It is shown that the asymptotical frequency of the symmetric mode at the Brillouin boundary decreases along with the decreased gap size between these two corrugated metal surfaces while the asymptotical frequency increases for the anti-symmetric mode. The anti-symmetric mode demonstrates larger propagation losses than the symmetric mode. Further, the losses for both symmetric and anti-symmetric modes decrease when this gap size enlarges. By decreasing groove depth, the asymptotical frequency increases for both the symmetric and the anti-symmetric mode, but the variation of propagation losses is more complicated. Propagation losses increase along with the increased period. Our studies on the dispersion characteristics and propagation losses of SSP modes on this doubly corrugated metallic structure with various parameters is instructive for numerous applications such as waveguides, circuitry systems with high integration, filters and powerful electronic sources in the THz regime. (paper)