Landau damping of surface plasmons in metal nanostructures

We develop a quantum-mechanical theory for Landau damping of surface plasmons in metal nanostructures of arbitrary shape. We show that the electron surface scattering, which facilitates plasmon decay in small nanostructures, can be incorporated into the metal dielectric function on par with phonon and impurity scattering. The derived surface scattering rate is determined by the local field polarization relative to the metal-dielectric interface and is highly sensitive to the system geometry. We illustrate our model by providing analytical results for surface scattering rate in some common shape nanostructures. Our results can be used for calculations of hot carrier generation rates in photovoltaics and photochemistry applications.