Investigation of terahertz surface waves of a metallic nanowire

The influence of the nonlocal effect on the optical properties of terahertz waves propagating along a metallic nanowire has been investigated, taking into account the effects of the composed materials, metal wire radii, and radiation frequencies. The results manifest that the nonlocal effect has significant influence on the propagation properties of terahertz nanowire surface waves. The contour results show that as metal wire radii increase, the phase velocity increases, and the attenuation losses decrease. On condition that the metallic nanowire radius is small (tens of nanometers), the attenuation losses of the surface waves decrease with the increasing of frequency. The numerical results are very useful for the development of nanoplasmonic devices in the fields of terahertz spectroscopy, biological sensors, and detectors. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America