Enhanced Surface Photon Drag on Plasmonic Metamaterials: A Fizeau-Doppler Shift Study

Abstract

In this work, we numerically study the Fizeau-Doppler shift of surface modes in a moving plasmonic metamaterial. At proper surface plasmon resonance conditions, a slow group velocity is resulted in the metamaterials, and our simulation indicates a phase shift up to 4 orders of magnitude larger than the normal mode. In addition, both appreciable positive and negative photon drag could be observed. We also found an abrupt transition in the sign of phase shift when silver film reaches a critical thickness. This opens new opportunities in applications such as compact optical gyroscopes and accelerometers.