The reduced Rayleigh equation for the scattering of a surface plasmon polariton incident non-normally on a one-dimensional ridge or groove on an otherwise planar metal surface is solved by a purely numerical approach. The solution is used to calculate the transmission, reflection, and out-of-plane scattering coefficients of the surface plasmon polariton. The angular dependence of the out-of-plane scattering is found to have a conical nature.

We study properties of a p-polarized surface plasmon polariton propagating circumferentially around a portion of a cylindrical interface between a vacuum and a metal, a situation investigated earlier by Berry (J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 8 (1975) 1952). When the metal is convex toward the vacuum this mode is radiative and consequently is attenuated as it propagates on the cylindrical surface. An approximate analytic solution of the dispersion relation for this wave is obtained by an approach different from the one used by Berry, and plots of the real and imaginary parts of its wave number are presented. When the metal is concave to the vacuum, the resulting dispersion relation possesses a multiplicity of solutions that have the nature of waveguide modes that owe their existence to the curvature of the interface. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

By means of a modal method we have calculated the angular dependence of the reflectivity and the efficiencies of several other diffracted orders of a perfectly conducting lamellar reflection grating illuminated by p-polarized light. These dependencies display the signatures of Rayleigh and Wood anomalies, usually associated with diffraction from a metallic grating. The Wood anomalies here are caused by the excitation of the surface electromagnetic waves supported by a periodically corrugated perfectly conducting surface, whose dispersion curves in both the nonradiative and radiative regions of the frequency-wavenumber plane are calculated.