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Updated: Jan 26, 2026

Determination of the Excitation and Coupling Rates Between Light Emitters and Surface Plasmon Polaritons
Published on: July 21, 2018
Scattering of spoof surface plasmon polaritons in defect-rich THz waveguides
Andreas K Klein1, Alastair Basden2, Jonathan Hammler3
1Department of Engineering, Durham University, South Road, DH1 3LE, Durham, UK. andreas.klein@durham.ac.uk.
Abstract:
We report on the first observation of 'Spoof' Surface Plasmon Polariton (SPP) scattering from surface defects on metal-coated 3D printed, corrugated THz waveguiding surfaces. Surface defects, a result of the printing process, are shown to assist the direct coupling of the incident free-space radiation into a spoof SPP wave; removing the need to bridge the photon momentum gap using knife-edge or prism coupling. The free space characteristics, propagation losses and confinement of the spoof SPPs to the surface are measured, and the results are compared to finite-difference time domain simulations. Angular resolved THz spectroscopy measurements reveal the scattering patterns from surfaces and are compared with Mie theory, taking into account the shortened wavelength of the photons in their bound SPP state compared to their free space wavelength. These results confirm yet another similarity between the properties of THz spoof SPPs and their natural, non-spoof, counterparts at optical and infrared frequencies which also, unexpectedly, adds functionality to the structures.
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