Analysis of surface plasmon waves in metaldielectric- metal structures and the criterion for negative refractive index.

Surface plasmon waves in metal-dielectric-metal structures have been theoretically examined. Because of the existence of evanescent waves that can have comparable or smaller decay rates than the propagating waves, the sign of dispersion does not necessarily indicate the sign of effective refractive index for these structures. By using the direction of energy decay to distinguish the sign of index, we have obtained different results and insights from previous reports. We also propose an approach to increase the bandwidth and decrease the loss of negative index surface Plasmon propagation in the MDM structure, by simply changing the properties of its dielectric layer.