Coupled harmonic oscillator models for correlated plasmons in one-dimensional and quasi-one-dimensional systems

A new phenomenon of correlated plasmons was first observed in the insulating phase of the Sr1-x Nb1-y O3+delta family (Asamara et al 2017 Nat. Commun. 8 15271). The correlated plasmons are tunable, have multiple plasmonic frequencies, and exhibit low loss-making them desirable in numerous plasmonic applications. However, their fundamental mechanism is yet to be explored. While conventional plasmons can be understood solely by considering long-range interactions, unconventional correlated plasmons arise in correlated electron systems and require consideration of the short-range interactions. Here, we report how the interplay of short-range and long-range interactions determines the correlated plasmon phenomena through a coupled harmonic oscillator model of both 1D and quasi-1D systems. In each system, the impact of various physical parameters like the number of oscillators, energy scale, free electron scattering parameter, quasi-particle concentration, charges, effective masses, and Coulomb interaction strengths are explored to gain an understanding of their impact on the complex dielectric function and loss function. We study both cases where the parameters are the same for all quasi-particles and where effective mass, Coulomb interaction strength, and charge are varied for individual quasi-particles. In an extended model of the quasi-1D system, we study both cases where the rung symmetry of all parameters is conserved and where it is broken. When rung symmetry is conserved, the overall trends in optical and plasmonic peaks are the same as the 1D model, though the peaks tend to shift to higher energies and amplitudes. When rung symmetry is broken, the quasi-1D behavior deviates significantly from the 1D model, including an increase in the maximum possible number of optical and plasmonic peaks. Overall, our results demonstrate the significance of the interplay of short-range and long-range interactions in determining the correlated plasmons and identifying how various parameters can be used to tune the resulting plasmons.