Plasmon drag effect in metal nanostructures

Abstract

In order to better understand the mechanism of the photon drag effect in plasmonic nanostructures, photo-induced electric signals have been studied in gold and silver films and various plasmonic nanostructures. The spectral dependence of the effect points to the primary role of individual localized plasmon resonances in the photo-induced electromotive force (emf) generation responsible for the photon drag effect. We demonstrate the potential to engineer both the magnitude and polarity of the emf with nanoscale geometry and provide a simple model based on the intrinsic nonlinearity of metal in defining this effect.