Properties of phase-coherent energy shuttling on the nanoscale

Recently, the possibility of transporting electromagnetic energy as local-plasmon-polariton waves along arrays of silver nanoparticles was demonstrated experimentally [S. A. Maier, Nat. Mater. 2, 229 (2003)]. It was shown that dipole coupling facilitates phase-coherent excitation waves, which propagate while competing against decoherence effects occurring within each dot. In this article the authors study the ideal coherent shuttling in such a system, leaving decoherence for future investigation. In the weak field limit, the waves obey a Schrödinger equation, to be solved using either time-dependent wave-packet or energy resolved scattering techniques. The authors study some dynamical characteristics of these waves, emphasizing intuition and insight. Scattering from barriers, longitudinal-transverse coupling and acceleration methods are studied in detail. The authors also discuss briefly two-dimensional arrays and a simple decoherence model.