Directional surface plasmon polaritons excited by an atom near the left-handed materials slab

摘要

Directional surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) can be realized by the spontaneous emission of an atom via a one-dimensional slab of left-handed material (LHM). By adjusting the location of the atom and the thickness of the slab, only the TE-polarized SPP modes can exist, which are distributed near the surface and propagate mainly in the surface and along the direction norm to the atomic dipole moment. Consequently, the controllable single photon with definite polarization and narrow propagation directions can be generated by means of a LHM slab with suitable parameters.