Exploring magnetic plasmon polaritons in optical transmission through hole arrays perforated in trilayer structures

Optical transmission properties through hole arrays in metal/dielectric/metal trilayer structures were demonstrated. Besides the surface plasmon induced strong transmission and well-recognized negative refraction band, a higher mode was observed and elaborately investigated. Detailed results showed that this mode belongs to a higher magnetic excitation related to the reciprocal vector G(1,1) of the lattice, and a magnetic plasmon polariton ( MPP ) model was proposed to describe such magnetic excitations in periodically modulated structure. By adjusting the structural parameters, the authors can conveniently control the MPPs' properties, which provide us another way to tailor the light propagation properties in subwavelength structures. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.