  The traditional approaches of exciting plasmons consist of using electrons
(eg: electron energy loss spectroscopy) or light (Kretchman and Otto geometry)
while more recently plasmons have been excited even by single photons. A
different approach: thermal excitation of a plasmon resonance at high
temperatures using alternate plasmonic media was proposed by S. Molesky et.al.,
Opt. Exp. 21.101, A96-A110, (2013). Here, we show how the long-standing search
for a high temperature narrow band near-field emitter for thermophotovoltaics
can be fulfilled by high temperature plasmonics. We also describe how to
control Wein's displacement law in the near-field using high temperature
epsilon-near-zero metamaterials. Finally, we show that our work opens up an
interesting direction of research for the field of slow light: thermal emission
control.
