Application scope of multipole method for decomposition of plasmonic spectrum

Abstract

The electromagnetic multipole method has been extensively adopted for a better understanding of the physical mechanism of localized surface plasmon. In this work, we quantitatively decomposed the total extinction spectra of typical silver nanoparticles into multipole components, which are shown to be quite different from qualitative assignment of resonance peaks reported previously. Taking the quasi-normal mode method as reference standard, we examined the scope of application of the electromagnetic multipole method in assigning plasmonic resonance peaks, and pointed out the necessity of employing eigenmode-based approaches when interpreting plasmonic spectra, which can hopefully lead to more physical insights into the underlying mechanisms of plasmonics phenomena.

Keywords

• Localized surface plasmon
• Electromagnetic multipole
• Quasi-normal mode