Light extinction and scattering from individual and arrayed high-aspect-ratio trenches in metals

We investigate the scattering properties of two-dimensional high-aspect-ratio metal trenches acting as resonators for gap-surface plasmons and show that these resonators are highly efficient scatterers of free waves, reaching at resonance in the perfect-conductor limit the unitary dipolar limit for a two-dimensional scatterer. We construct a simple resonator model which predicts the wavelength-dependent extinction, scattering, and absorption cross section of the trench and compare the model findings with full numerical simulations. Both extinction and scattering cross sections are mainly determined by the wavelength and can reach highly supergeometric values. At wavelengths where the metal exhibits near perfect electrical conductor behavior, such trenches lend themselves to be used as self-normalizing scatterers, as their scattering cross section is independent of their geometry and depend only on the resonance wavelength. For real metals with nonzero absorption, efficient monomaterial absorbers and emitters can be fabricated. We extend the analysis to tapering trenches that can be readily fabricated employing common milling or etching techniques and verify by reflection spectroscopy and two-photon luminescence that the resonant behavior of the vertical trenches is preserved.