Femtosecond surface plasmon pulse propagation.

We analyze ultrafast surface plasmon-polariton pulse reshaping effects and nonlinear propagation modes for metal/dielectric plasmon waveguides. It is found that group velocity and loss dispersion effects can substantially modify both pulse duration (broadening/narrowing) and intensity decay (acceleration/retardation) by as much as several tens of percentage points in the short-pulse regime and that metallic nonlinearities alone may support soliton, self-focusing, and self-compressing modes.