Imaging of Plasmonic Modes of Silver Nanoparticles Using High-Resolution Cathodoluminescence Spectroscopy

Cathodoluminescence spectroscopy has been performed on silver nanoparticles in a scanning electron microscopy setup. Peaks appearing in the visible range for particles fabricated on silicon substrate are shown to arrive from excitation of out-of-plane eigenmodes by the electron beam. Monochromatic emission maps have been shown to resolve spatial field variation of resonant plasmon mode on length scale smaller than 25 nm. Finite-difference time-domain numerical simulations are performed for both the cases of light excitation and electron excitation. The results of radiative emission under electron excitation show an excellent agreement with experiments. A complete vectorial description of induced field is given, which complements the information obtained from experiments.