Spatial structure of surface plasmon resonance under narrow-beam illumination and its implications for sensing
Abstract
The reflection of light on a surface plasmon resonance structure can be understood as the interference between the direct Fresnel reflection and the light radiated back by the plasmon as it propagates along the metal film. When the beam waist is only an order of magnitude larger than the surface plasmon propagation length, these two contributions separate spatially, and their destructive interference localizes into a dark fringe within the reflected beam. We develop an analytical model of this effect, design a realistic setup based on off-the-shelf components to observe it, and simulate the complete experiment, from illumination to detection, with an open-source framework. In the regime where the interference is maximized, the spatial structure of the reflected beam becomes extremely sensitive to the outer medium. This allows us to define an observable more than an order of magnitude more sensitive than amplitude-based measurements, and we expect a comparable improvement in resolution.
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BibTeX
@misc{miralles2026spatial,
title = {{Spatial structure of surface plasmon resonance under narrow-beam illumination and its implications for sensing}},
author = {Tristan Miralles and Rémi Pollès and Pauline Bennet and Denis Langevin and Martine Mihailovic and Emmanuel Centeno and Jack Mock and David R. Smith and Antoine Moreau},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.06222},
eprint = {2611.06222},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06222},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Spatial structure of surface plasmon resonance under narrow-beam illumination and its implications for sensing
AU - Tristan Miralles
AU - Rémi Pollès
AU - Pauline Bennet
AU - Denis Langevin
AU - Martine Mihailovic
AU - Emmanuel Centeno
AU - Jack Mock
AU - David R. Smith
AU - Antoine Moreau
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.06222
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.06222
AB - The reflection of light on a surface plasmon resonance structure can be understood as the interference between the direct Fresnel reflection and the light radiated back by the plasmon as it propagates along the metal film. When the beam waist is only an order of magnitude larger than the surface plasmon propagation length, these two contributions separate spatially, and their destructive interference localizes into a dark fringe within the reflected beam. We develop an analytical model of this effect, design a realistic setup based on off-the-shelf components to observe it, and simulate the complete experiment, from illumination to detection, with an open-source framework. In the regime where the interference is maximized, the spatial structure of the reflected beam becomes extremely sensitive to the outer medium. This allows us to define an observable more than an order of magnitude more sensitive than amplitude-based measurements, and we expect a comparable improvement in resolution.
ER -