Tunable plasmon polaritons in arrays of interacting metallic nanoparticles

Abstract

We consider a simple cubic array of metallic nanoparticles supporting extended collective plasmons that arise from the near-field dipolar interaction between localized surface plasmons in each nanoparticle. We develop a fully analytical quantum theory of the strong-coupling regime between these collective plasmons and photons resulting in plasmon polaritons in the nanoparticle array. Remarkably, we show that the polaritonic band gap and the dielectric function of the metamaterial can be significantly modulated by the polarization of light. We unveil how such an anisotropic behavior in the plasmonic metamaterial is crucially mediated by the dipolar interactions between the nanoparticles despite the symmetry of the underlying lattice. Our results thus pave the way towards the realization of tunable quantum plasmonic metamaterials presenting interaction-driven birefringence.