  Nanostructured plasmonic metal systems are known to enhance greatly variety
of radiative and nonradiative optical processes, both linear and nonlinear,
which are due to the interaction of an electron in a molecule or semiconductor
with the enhanced local optical field of the surface plasmons. Principally
different are numerous many-body phenomena that are due to the Coulomb
interaction between charged particles: carriers (electrons and holes) and ions.
These include carrier-carrier or carrier-ion scattering, energy and momentum
transfer (including the drag effect), thermal equilibration, exciton formation,
impact ionization, Auger effects, etc. It is not widely recognized that these
and other many-body effects can also be modified and enhanced by the
surface-plasmon local fields. A special but extremely important class of such
many-body phenomena is constituted by chemical reactions at metal surfaces,
including catalytic reactions. Here, we propose a general and powerful theory
of the plasmonic enhancement of the many-body phenomena resulting in a closed
expression for the surface plasmon-dressed Coulomb interaction. We illustrate
this theory by computing this dressed interaction explicitly for an important
example of metal-dielectric nanoshells, which exhibits a reach resonant
behavior in both the magnitude and phase. This interaction is used to describe
the nanoplasmonic-enhanced Foerster energy transfer between nanocrystal quantum
dots in the proximity of a plasmonic nanoshell. Catalysis at nanostructured
metal surfaces, nonlocal carrier scattering and surface-enhanced Raman
scattering are discussed among other effects and applications where the
nanoplasmonic renormalization of the Coulomb interaction may be of principal
importance.
