This book studies various effects related to the excitation of surface
plasmons in different kinds of plasmonic nanostructures. We start with a
general introduction of the field of plasmonics in Chapter 1, where we
discuss both propagating surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and localized
surface plasmons (LSPs), and how they are related to each other through
Bohr condition. In Chapter 2 we demonstrate a new mechanism to achieve
complete spectral gaps without periodicity along the propagation
direction based on the coupling of backward and forward modes supported
by plasmonic nanostructures. In Chapter 3 we introduce the concept of
plasmonic potentials and demonstrate how to obtain different kinds of
potentials for SPPs in various modulated metal-dielectric-metal
structures. We further show efficient beam shaping in such potentials.
In Chapter 4 we study scattering pattern shaping involving
optically-induced magnetic responses within nanoparticles. We have
achieved both unidirectional forward scattering with individual
core-shell nanoparticles and polarization-independent Fano resonances in
such nanparticle arrays. At the end we discuss the challenges and future
developments.