ATR and leed studies of surface polaritons

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the attenuated total reflectivity of light and the low energy electron dispersion to study the propagation of polaritons at dielectric-conductor (D-C) interfaces and metallic film (MF) systems in the local theory. We consider, for the D-C interfaces, two propagation windows: I. 0 < ω < ω s1 (<ω T) and II. ω L < ω < ω s2 and for the MF, frequencies below ω p , the plasma frequency. Where ω T and ω L are the characteristic exciton frequencies and ω si are the solutions of ϵ( ω s ) + ϵ 2( ω s ) = 0. The comparative studies on Al  CdS interfaces and Al films indicate that by the suitable preparation of D-C interfaces and MF, the experimental excitation and detection of the surface and interface polariton modes may be achieved.