Life-time of surface plasmons in small metal particles

Existing theories concerning the life-time of surface plasmons in small metal particles fail to explain recent experimental data for silver. Therefore, two of these theories were critically re-examined, and some numerical errors were found. The semi-classical approach by Lozovik et al. yields, after correction, physically reasonable results, which are nearly identical with theoretical results by Kreibig. The corrected RPA-result by Lushnikov et al. is in quantitative agreement with recent experimental data for silver.