Modified method of surface plasmons in metal superlattices

We present a modified method to solve the surface plasmons (SPs) of semi-infinite metal/dielectric superlattices and predicted new SP modes in physics. We find that four dispersion-equation sets and all possible SP modes are determined by them. Our analysis and numerical calculations indicate that besides the SP mode obtained in the original theory, the other two SP modes are predicted, which have either a positive group velocity or a negative group velocity. We also point out the possible defect in the previous theoretical method in accordance to the linear algebra principle.