Quantum ergodicity and localization of plasmon resonances

Habib Ammari, Yat Tin Chow, Hongyu Liu

Published 2020-03-08Version 1

We are concerned with the geometric properties of the surface plasmon resonance (SPR). SPR is a non-radiative electromagnetic surface wave that propagates in a direction parallel to the negative permittivity/dielectric material interface. It is known that the SPR oscillation is topologically very sensitive to the material interface. However, we show that the SPR oscillation asympotically localizes at places with high magnitude of curvature in a certain sense. Our work leverages the Heisenberg picture of quantization and quantum ergodicity first derived by Shnirelman, Zelditch, Colin de Verdiere and Helffer-Martinez-Robert, as well as certain novel and more general ergodic properties of the Neumann-Poincar\'e operator to analyse the SPR field, which are of independent interest to the spectral theory and the potential theory.