Plasmon modes in elongated gold nanoparticles

We report on the optical excitation of plasmon modes in elongated gold nanoparticles. Beside dipolar plasmon modes higher order plasmon modes can be excited. As has been reported recently for elongated silver nanoparticles (Krenn et al., Appl.Phys.Lett 77, 3379 (2000)) this geometry gives rise to narrow extinction bands that are spectrally well separated.