Jens Dorfmüller¹, Ralf Vogelgesang¹, Moritz Eßlinger¹, Worawut Khunsin¹, Christian Ettrich², Carsten Rockstuh^l2, and Klaus Kern¹

Talk at the Meeting of the DPG in Regensburg, 2010

¹Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

²Institute of Condensed Matter Theory and Solid State Optics, Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena

At radio-frequencies, antenna theory is a well understood topic. At optical frequencies, however, antenna sizes are in the order of skin depths so that electromagnetic fields penetrate substantially into the volume of metallic nanostructures, rendering classic radio antenna theory not applicable. We develop a fully analytical model for the electromagnetic behavior of plasmonic wires. Therefore, we model thin, linear plasmonic antennas based on the assumption of homogeneous volume currents. Our model requires only a handful, physically motivated, adjustable parameters. It successfully predicts measured and simulated data in full detail: emission patterns, nearfield optical amplitudes and phases, as well geometric resonances.