Controlling surface plasmon polariton losses in the visible spectrum by temperature-induced interband transitions

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We study theoretically the temperature dynamics at the metal-dielectric interface excited by a strong pump surface plasmon polariton pulse propagating along it. We demonstrate that the inclusion of the interband transitions leads to much stronger temperature-induced modulation of the imaginary part of the dielectric constant induced by the pump. We show that in the visible part of the spectrum a strong pump field can even lead to the decrease in the extinction coefficient for the co- or contrapropagating probe wave.