Journal of Nonlinear Optical Physics & Materials Vol. 11, No. 1 (2002) 65–74 c  World Scientific Publishing Company PLASMON MODES IN METAL NANOWIRES AND LEFT-HANDED MATERIALS VIKTOR A. PODOLSKIY E-QUAD Electrical Engineering Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA ANDREY K. SARYCHEV and VLADIMIR M. SHALAEV School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Laffayette, IN 47907-1285, USA Received 11 October 2001 The electromagnetic field distribution for thin metal nanowires is found, by using the discrete dipole approximation. The plasmon polariton modes in wires are numerically simulated. These modes are found to be dependent on the incident light wavelength and direction of propagation. The existence of localized plasmon modes and strong local field enhancement in percolation nanowire composites is demonstrated. Novel left-handed materials in the near-infrared and visible are proposed based on nanowire composites. 1. Introduction Recently, the problem of EM field distribution for long and thin nanometer-sized needles (nano-wires) has attracted growing interest. 1 In this paper we are dealing with metal needles, whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of inci- dent light, and whose length is of the order of the wavelength. In this limit, we use efficient numerical methods for solving the problem. There are several numeri- cal methods available for finding field distributions for objects of arbitrary shapes. In this paper we use a special modification of the discrete-dipole approximation (DDA), which employs the intersecting effective spheres for finding the field dis- tribution. By using this approach we simulate the field distribution for individual nm-sized metal needles and for a percolation composite formed by such needles. For individual needles, it is found that the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be excited, resulting in large local fields. For percolation composites formed by the needles, our simulations suggest the existence of localized plasmon modes and strong local field enhancement associated with these modes. The developed theory suggests the possibility of production the left-handed nanowire composite. 65