Dipole-excited surface plasmons in metallic nanoparticles: Engineering decay dynamics within the discrete-dipole approximation

A theoretical control of the electromagnetic coupling between localized surface plasmons and pointlike sources of radiation is a relevant topic in nanoscience and nanophotonics. In this paper a numerical approach based on the discrete dipole approximation is presented as a practical and reliable computational tool to study the decay dynamics of a dipole when it is located in the near proximities of metallic nanoparticles whose shapes do not allow a fully analytical treatment. The method is first applied to Ag nanospheres and nanoshells, which represent two analytically solvable cases, and it is shown to lead to a very good agreement with exact results. The approach is then used to consider the response, in terms of perturbations induced on the radiative and nonradiative decay rates, of elongated nanoparticles, like Ag prolate spheroids and nanocones. Results demonstrate how the optical response of conically shaped nanoparticles can be affected by the distance and the orientation of the emitter of radiation, as well as by other geometrical parameters. The particular symmetry of these plasmonic objects results in peculiar features: the absorption efficiencies of the modes depend on the distance of the source of radiation in a counterintuitive way, and this is explained in terms of the excited charge density distributions. The possibility to simulate arbitrary-shaped nanostructures and several dipole-metal configurations presented here, could thus open new avenues for an aware use of surface plasmons in fluorescence spectroscopy applications or single photon emission studies.