Radiative plasmon polaritons in multilayer structures with a two-dimensional electron gas

Two-dimensional plasmon polaritons are analyzed for a typical experimental configuration in which a layer of two-dimensional electrons with a finite mobility lies on the top of a dielectric waveguide formed by the substrate (a wafer of finite thickness). Two-dimensional plasmons couple strongly to the radiative modes of this dielectric waveguide. It is shown that, as a result of the competition between collisional and radiative processes, a family of eight quasi-stationary normal modes arises. Six of them decay carrying energy to infinity. The two remaining plasmon-polariton modes are nonradiative. One of these modes, the TM-type plasmon polariton, in the limiting case where retardation is disregarded corresponds to the conventional longitudinal two-dimensional plasmon. The other mode, the TE-type plasmon polariton, exists only for a finite thickness of the substrate. All of them are characterized by different dispersion relations of the complex frequency ω(q) = Reω + iImω and differ in both polarization (longitudinal and transverse) and symmetry with respect to the direction of decay (symmetric and asymmetric). The latter modes decay slowly, propagating into free space to plus or minus infinity. The conditions under which the Q factors of certain modes are arbitrarily high are found. In this case, Imω(q ₀) = 0, and dissipative losses in the two-dimensional electron gas are compensated by external sources. As a result, the reflection coefficient for a plane wave whose angle of incidence is determined by the vector q ₀ vanishes.