Plasmon polaritons of metallic nanowires for controlling submicron propagation of light

We use the Green dyadic technique to study the propagation of a local excit ation along metallic nanowires of a subwavelength cross section. The metall ic nanowires are elongated parallelepipeds deposited on a transparent subst rate. A tightly focused plane wave illuminates one end of the nanowires. Th e localized surface-plasmon resonances of the nanowires propagate the local excitations over distances larger than the incident wavelength. The proper ties of the electromagnetic eigenmodes of the nanowires are analyzed in ter ms of the local density of states.