Surface plasmon toy-models of black holes and wormholes

Abstract

Surface plasmons at metal interfaces are collective excitations of the conduction electrons and the electromagnetic field. They exist in "curved three-dimensional space-times" defined by the shape of the metal surface and the spatial distribution of the dielectric constant near the surface. Here we show that surface plasmon toy models of many non-trivial space-time metrics, such as wormholes and black holes, can be easily built and studied in experiments. For example, a droplet of dielectric on the metal surface behaves as a black hole for surface plasmons within a substantial frequency range. On the other hand, a nanohole in a thin metal membrane may be treated as a wormhole connecting two "flat" surface plasmon worlds located on the opposite interfaces of the membrane.