Effective permittivity for resonant plasmonic nanoparticle systems via dressed polarizability

Abstract

We present an effective medium theory for resonant plasmonic nanoparticle systems. By utilizing the notion of dressed polarizability to describe dipolar particle interactions, we show that even highly concentrated, resonant plasmonic particles can be correctly described by the effective medium theory. The effective permittivity tensor of a nanoparticle monolayer is found explicitly and the resulting absorbance spectrum is shown to agree with rigorous numerical results from the FDTD model. The effective theory based on dressed polarizability provides a powerful tool to tailor resonant optical behaviors and design diverse plasmonic devices. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America