Dynamic depolarization in plasmonic metal nanoparticles

Abstract

At very low photon energies most metals have a very large and negative dielectric function. For the response of a metal nanoparticle to an external field in this limit, this means that the particular choice of metal does not matter and the localized surface plasmon energy mainly depends on the shape and size of the particle. Here, we present a theoretical framework to describe this situation and unearth the interplay between the depolarization factor of the problem at hand and the dielectric function of the particle. Available experimental results compare favorably with our theoretical framework.