Spectroscopic Ellipsometry of Surface Plasmons

When plasmons are excited on metal surfaces, the electron system of the investigated sample is perturbed initiating changes in the dielectric function. Revealing these changes are crucial to design plasmonic components for ultrafast nanooptical switches, sensors or plasmonic circuits. So far, methods aiming at determining dielectric properties upon plasmon excitation have been mainly limited to the measurement of the changes in reflection or absorption properties of the samples illuminated by short laser pulses [1].