  The fact that surface-induced damping rate of surface plasmon polaritons
(SPPs) in metal nanoparticles increases with the decrease of particle size is
well known. We show that this rate also increases with the degree of the mode
confinement, hence damping of the higher order nonradiative SPP modes in
spherical particles is greatly enhanced relative to damping of the fundamental
(dipole) SPP mode. Since higher order modes are the ones responsible for
quenching of luminescence in the vicinity of metal surfaces, the degree of
quenching increases resulting in a substantial decrease in the amount of
attainable enhancement of the luminescence
