Surface Plasmons (SP) are coherent electromagnetic oscillations that exist at the interface between a dielectric and a metal. These plasmons can propagate along such an interface until the electromagnetic energy is dissipated. The primary aim of plasmonics is to exploit the optical properties of metallic nanostructures to enable active manipulation of light at the nanoscale. The natural compatibility of plasmonics
with electronics also offers a lot of promise for next-generation systems that will
incorporate the best qualities of both photonics and electronics for communication at
much higher speeds than what is possible today.
A plasmonic device based on negative index materials (NIMs) is also thought to be able to help in constructing a superlens
that can exceed the diffraction limit. NIMs are basically artificial structures where the
refractive index has a negative value leading to an unnatural deviation of light during
refraction when it is incident on to a NIM from a positive index material.
This course is going to cover the theoretical aspects of plasmas, plasmonics and negative index
materials with a few lectures on computer simulations using FDTD.
