Geometric Dependence of the Line Width of Localized Surface Plasmon Resonances

For the same number of electrons and plasmon frequencies, longitudinal plasmon resonances in metallic nanorods exhibit narrower line widths than plasmon modes in spherical particles. We show that this property is a general feature of high aspect ratio nanostructures and can be explained very simply by incorporating retardation effects into a harmonic oscillator model. The origin of the effect is dynamic depolarization, which renormalizes the mass of the electrons and the oscillating electron liquid. The scattering spectrum derived from our model agrees very well with FDTD simulations. Because plasmon damping determines many important features and applications of LSPR, such as the Q factor of plasmonics devices and the magnitude of the induced field enhancements, our study will play an important role for the design of nanostructures with narrow plasmon resonances.