Influence of nanoscale cutoff in random self-affine fractal silver surfaces on the excitation of localized optical modes

Giant enhancement of elastic surface plasmon-polariton scattering

Here we report the first (as far as we know) experimental observation of extremely high enhancement factor due to elastic surface plasmon-polariton scattering by surface singularities.We have observed strong diffraction of surface plasmon-polaritons by shallow diffraction grating while its illumination by evanescent or volume waves do not shows any traces of diffraction structure in space distribution of scattered light.

Electromagnetic model and calculations of the surface-enhanced Raman-shifted emission from Langmuir-Blodgett films on metal nanostructures

We present a theoretical study of the electromagnetic contribution to surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) from a Langmuir-Blodgett film close to a metal surface. This macroscopic dipolar model fully accounts for the Raman-shifted emission so that meaningful SERS (electromagnetic) enhancement factors that do not depend only on the local electromagnetic field enhancement at the pump frequency are defined. For a plane metal surface, analytical SERS enhancement factors that are consistent for all pump beam polarization and molecular orientation are obtained. In order to investigate SERS on complex nanostructured metal surfaces, we introduce this model into the formally exact, Green's theorem surface integral equation formulation of the scattered electromagnetic field. This formulation is thus employed to calculate numerically the near-field and far-field emissions at the Raman-shifted frequency for very rough, random nanostructured surfaces, with emphasis on the impact of collective processes for varying pump frequency and Raman shift. Our results reveal that the widely used |E|4 approximation tends to overestimate average SERS enhancement factors.

Near-field speckles produced by random self-affine surfaces and their contrast transitions

By use of a numerical calculation based on Green's integral equation, we study the near-field speckles produced by the random self-affine fractal surfaces of a dielectric medium. The speckle intensities evolve considerably in the near-field region, and the local fluctuations in them disappear before they have traversed the distance of a wavelength. The transition of the speckle contrast either on the surface or in the near field and in the neighborhood non-near-field regions depends on lateral correlation length xi and roughness exponent alpha of the random surfaces.

Electromagnetic mechanism in surface-enhanced Raman scattering from Gaussian-correlated randomly rough metal substrates

We investigate the electromagnetic mechanism in surfaceenhanced Raman scattering (SERS) from randomly rough metal surfaces with Gaussian statistics and Gaussian correlation function. By means of rigorous numerical calculations, large average SERS enhancement factors (above 104) are encountered when the correlation length is of the order of (or lower than) a hundred nanometers, with excitation in the visible and near infrared. These Gaussian-correlated metal surfaces can be used as SERS substrates. Furthermore, local SERS enhancement factors are obtained of up to 108 that make them appropriate for resonant SERS single molecule detection.

Light scattering from self-affine fractal silver surfaces with nanoscale cutoff: far-field and near-field calculations

We study the light scattered from randomly rough, one-dimensional, self-affine fractal silver surfaces with nanoscale lower cutoff illuminated by s- or p-polarized Gaussian beams a few micrometers wide. By means of rigorous numerical calculations based on the Green's theorem integral equation formulation (GTIEF), we obtain both the far- and near-field scattered intensities. The influence of diminishing the size of the fractal lower-scale irregularities (from approximately 50 nm to a few nanometers) is analyzed in the case of both single realization and ensemble-average magnitudes. For s polarization, variations are small in the far field, being significant only in the higher-spatial-frequency components of evanescent character in the near field. In the case of p polarization, however, the nanoscale cutoff has remarkable effects stemming from the roughness-induced excitation of surface-plasmon polaritons. In the far field, the effect is noticed both in the speckle pattern variation and in the decrease of the total reflected energy upon ensemble averaging, as a result of increased absorption. In the near field, more efficient excitation of localized optical modes is achieved with smaller cutoff, which in turn leads to huge surface electric field enhancements.