Abstract
The propagation of light in metal-coated fiber probes used in scanning near-field optical microscopy is studied computationally by means of the cross-section method. In contrast to previous work focusing on the behavior of the HE11 mode in the vicinity of the end aperture of the probe, we trace the propagation of the incident fundamental mode of the optical fiber through the tapered probe. The transformation of the fiber mode into the probe modes, intermode conversion, and modes cutoff are consistently calculated. In particular, it is shown that in the conventional gradual tapered probe only a few percent of the input power are transformed into the HE11 mode which has the smallest cutoff radius. In addition, an easily manufacturable modification of the shape of the probe’s tip that can provide a tenfold enhancement in optical near-field intensity has been proposed.
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