Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

Giant optical transmission of sub-wavelength apertures: physics and applications

Tineke Thio1,3, H J Lezec2, T W Ebbesen2, K M Pellerin1, G D Lewen1, A Nahata1 and R A Linke1

Show affiliations


The transmission of light through an aperture in a metal film is extremely small when the aperture diameter is much smaller than the optical wavelength. But when the metal surface surrounding the subwavelength hole is corrugated, the incident light can couple to surface plasmons (SP), excitation modes on the metal surface. A resonant interaction leads to an enhanced transmission at wavelengths determined by the corrugation pitch. We discuss applications of the SP enhanced transmission in near-field scanning optical microscopy and in high-density optical data storage.


PACS

78.68.+m Optical properties of surfaces

42.79.Ag Apertures, collimators

42.25.Bs Wave propagation, transmission and absorption

Subjects

Surfaces, interfaces and thin films

Optics, quantum optics and lasers

Dates

Issue 3 (June 2002)

Received 4 December 2001, in final form 12 March 2002

Published 23 May 2002



Related review articles

What's this?
View review articles related to this research to gain an insight into the key trends in this subject area. Related review articles are selected based on PACS/MSC codes, and are no more than three years old.

  1. Comparing experiment and theory in plasmonics

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.