The dispersion equation of injected surface-plasma waves that propagate on thin metal films has been solved as a function of the film thickness, and splitting of the modes into two branches is observed. For one branch the imaginary part of the propagation constant goes to zero as the thickness of the metal decreases. Reflectivity calculations agree with this result, which predicts that one can obtain propagation distances that are more than 1 order of magnitude larger than observed before.

• Received 17 August 1981

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.47.1927