Surface plasmon tunneling through a touching gold nanocylinder array on a thin gold film

The optical property of a structure composed of a touching gold nanocylinder array on a thin gold film is investigated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It is discovered that the transmission behavior can be tuned by tuning the geometry of the structure. As the film thickness increases, the transmission mode associated with the localized surface plasmon resonance blue shifts accompanied with a decrease of magnitude and full width at half maximum, and a second transmission appear due to the interaction of the plasmons on the cylinder with their images induced on the film. The localized waveguide resonance diminishes but the second resonance peak is intensified and broadened noticeably with the separation of the cylinder array and film increase. The cylinder radius size influences the localized surface plasmon resonance mode obviously. These results may be helpful for the design of a novel optical device.