Self-collimation phenomena of surface waves in structured perfect electric conductors and metal surfaces.

We demonstrate that surface waves in structured perfect electric conductor surfaces can be self-collimated using the finite-difference time-domain method. The self-collimation frequency is obtained from the equi-frequency contours of a perfect electric conductor patterned with an array of square holes. The field patterns of the self-collimated surface wave, obtained using the periodic boundary conditions, show that the surface waves propagate with almost no spreading. We also show that self-collimation phenomena can be observed for the hybrid surface plasmon waves in structured metal surfaces using the finite-difference time-domain method with the Drude model. It is shown that for a structured silver surface the self-collimation can be achieved at the frequencies in the infrared region.