We present analytical expressions for the resonance frequencies of the plasmonic modes hosted in a cylindrical nanoparticle within the quasi-static approximation. Our theoretical model gives us access to both the longitudinally and transversally polarized dipolar modes for a metallic cylinder with an arbitrary aspect ratio, which allows us to capture the physics of both plasmonic nanodisks and nanowires. We also calculate quantum mechanical corrections to these resonance frequencies due to the spill-out effect, which is of relevance for cylinders with nanometric dimensions. We go on to consider the coupling of localized surface plasmons in a dimer of cylindrical nanoparticles, which leads to collective plasmonic excitations. We extend our theoretical formalism to construct an analytical model of the dimer, describing the evolution with the inter-nanoparticle separation of the resultant bright and dark collective modes. We comment on the renormalization of the coupled mode frequencies due to the spill-out effect, and discuss some methods of experimental detection.

We acknowledge support from Agence Nationale de la Recherche(grant no. ANR-14-CE26-0005 Q-MetaMat). C.A.D. acknowledges support from the Juan de la Cierva programme (MINECO, Spain) and from the Royal Society University Research Fellowship(URF/R1/201158). This research project has been supported by the University of Strasbourg IdEx programme.

Peer reviewed