Surface plasmon polaritons in attenuated total reflection systems with metamaterials: homogeneous problem

Abstract

In this work we study the propagation characteristics of surface plasmon polaritons (surface eigenmodes) of Kretschmann attenuated total reflection structures with metamaterials. Contrary to the conventional case, in which surface polaritons with positive phase velocity appear at the boundary of a metallic guide, we consider a case where surface polaritons propagate along the boundary of a transparent metamaterial guide with negative refractive index. Depending on the choice of the metamaterial constitutive parameters, these polaritons can have either positive (forward) or negative (backward) phase velocity. For both situations we show numerical examples that illustrate the variation of the real and imaginary parts of the propagation constant with the guide width and the spatial distributions of energy.