Modal analysis for nanoplasmonics with nonlocal material properties

Abstract

Plasmonic devices with feature sizes of a few nanometers exhibit effects which can be described by the nonlocal hydrodynamic Drude model. We demonstrate how to exploit contour integral methods for computing eigenfrequencies and resonant states of such systems. We propose an approach for deriving the modal expansion of relevant physical observables. We use the methods to perform a modal analysis for a metal nanowire. All complex eigenfrequencies in a large frequency range and the corresponding resonant states are computed. We identify those resonant states which are relevant for the extinction cross section of the nanowire.