Reduced radiation losses in electron beam excited propagating plasmons.

Except for heating losses in metal, propagating plasmons also suffer a lot from radiation losses. In this paper, electron beams are proposed as a way to excite higher-order, multipolar plasmons, which would otherwise not be excited by light, as a way to reduce radiation losses. Specifically, electron excited guided plasmons in a coupled nanoparticle chain and a symmetrical four-wire waveguide are separately discussed. In the coupled nanoparticle chain, the plasmon mode formed by quadrupolar polarized particles with low radiation is efficiently coupled by electron beams. Meanwhile, in the four-wire waveguide, the excited plasmons with zero momentum in the cross-section of each wire possess longer propagating distance than other higher-order plasmons.