Massive surface-plasmon polaritons

It is well-known that a quantum of light (photon) has a zero mass in vacuum. Entering into a medium the photon creates a quasiparticle (polariton, plasmon, surface-phonon, surface-plasmon polariton, etc.) whose rest mass is generally not zero. In this letter, devoted to the memory of Mark Stockman, we evaluate the rest mass of light-induced surface-plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and discuss an idea that collisions of two massive SPP quasiparticles can result in changes of their frequencies according to the energy and momentum conservation laws.

Surface Phonon Polariton Modes in Suspended Monolayer Hexagonal Boron Nitrides

Dispersion properties and characteristics of transverse magnetic (TM) and transverse electric (TE) surface phonon polaritons (SPhP) in suspended monolayer hexagonal boron nitrides (hBN) was studied extensively. The analytical results show that the hBN based TM (TE) phonon polaritons exist in restsrahlen bands when imaginary surface conductivity is positive. The effective mode index of TM phonon polaritons is much higher than that of TE phonon polaritons with respective values of ~3000 and ~1.0002 which makes TM SPhP more promising in the practical realization. In addition, the propagation length of TE SPhP is less lossy and surpass that of TM SPhP by factor of 104. This study compares these important properties and sheds more insight into their applications in optical communications, photonics and optoelectronics devices.