Characteristics of surface plasmon polaritons at a chiral–metal interface

The characteristics of surface plasmon polaritons at a chiral-metal interface are analyzed in detail. Compared to conventional surface plasmon waves at a dielectric-metal interface, it is shown that chiral surface plasmon waves have distinguishing features such as the presence of an s-wave at the metal surface, the existence of a cutoff frequency and chirality value, and the dependence of the propagation length on the chiral parameter. These properties of chiral surface plasmon waves can be exploited for on-chip chiral sensing and enantiometric detection applications.