Hydrodynamic modeling of surface plasmon enhanced photon induced current in a gold grating

The current induced by incident photons on an gold grating slab is investigated numerically and experimentally. A semiclassical electrodynamic model is developed under the weak nonlinearity approximation. Electrons in the conduction band are treated as an electron gas in the presence of a self-consistent electromagnetic field. The model is solved by the finite element method and compared with measurements. The calculated current density as a function of incident angle and wavelength is found to be in qualitative agreement with the experimental measurements. The results show that increasing surface plasmon spatial variation enhances photon induced current.