  We study the light scattered from randomly rough, one-dimensional self-affine
fractal silver surfaces with nanoscale lower cutoff, illuminated by s- or
p-polarized Gaussian beams a few microns wide. By means of rigorous numerical
calculations based on the Green theorem integral equation formulation, we
obtain both the far- and near-field scattered intensities. The influence of
diminishing the fractal lower scale cutoff (from below a hundred, down to a few
nanometers) is analyzed in the case of both single realizations and ensemble
average magnitudes. For s polarization, variations are small in the far field,
being only significant in the higher spatial frequency components of evanescent
character in the near field. In the case of p polarization, however, the
nanoscale cutoff has remarkable effects stemming from the roughness-induced
excitation of surface-plasmon polaritons. In the far field, the effect is
noticed both in the speckle pattern variation and in the decrease of the total
reflected energy upon ensemble averaging, due to increased absorption. In the
near field, more efficient excitation of localized optical modes is achieved
with smaller cutoff, which in turn leads to huge surface electric field
enhancements.
