Optical excitation of surface plasmons on Ag based alloys

Abstract
Dilute silver-nickel alloys have been studied by surface plasmons excited by attenuated total reflection. The samples have been prepared by radio frequence sputtering and characterized by TEM, X-ray fluorescence and SIMS. The surface plasmon dispersion curves have been analysed in connection with the virtual bound levels which exist in such materials. This allows us to evaluate the energy and the width of this level (E0 ~ 2.2 eV, Δ ~ 0.35 eV)