Scattering coefficients of surface plasmon polaritons impinging at oblique incidence onto one-dimensional surface relief defects

Abstract

We present a theoretical analysis of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) scattering by shallow one-dimensional surface relief defects for oblique incidence, applying both surface impedance boundary conditions and Rayleigh expansion. Using this method, nontrivial angular dependences for transmission, reflection, and out-of-plane scattering are obtained. For the case of a defect with rectangular shape, we give an analytical description of the interference phenomena caused by the SPP diffraction for both a single defect (either protrusion or indentation) and a finite array of them. © 2007 The American Physical Society.