Radial breathing modes coupling in plasmonic molecules

Metallic hexamer, very much the plasmonic analog of benzene molecule, provides an ideal platform to mimic modes coupling and hybridization in molecular systems. To demonstrate this, we present a detailed study on radial breathing mode (RBM) coupling in a plasmonic dual-hexamers. We excite RBMs of hexamers by symmetrically matching the polarization state of the illumination with the distribution of electric dipole moments of the dual-hexamer. It is found that the RBM coupling exhibits a nonexponential decay when the inter-hexamer separation is increased, owing to the dark mode nature of RBM. When the outer hexamer is subjected to the in-plane twisting, resonant wavelengths of two coupled RBMs as well as the coupling constant show cosine variations with the twist angle, indicating the symmetry of hexamer structure plays a critical role in the coupling of RBMs. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the coupling of RBMs is dominated by the in-plane interaction as the outer hexamer is under an out-of-plane tilting, causing convergence of resonant wavelengths of the two coupled RBMs with increasing tilt angle. Our results not only provide an insight into the plasmonic RBM coupling mechanism, but also pave the way to systematically control the spectral response of plasmonic molecules.