Observation of Scattered Evanescent Waves

Abstract

Spatial resolution in the conventional optical microscopy depends on diffraction limit. Photon scanning tunneling microscopy is one of the microscopic methods that surpass the diffraction limit. It scans an object with detecting evanescent wave on object surface. Evanescent wave is scattered by the tip of a fiber probe and guided to a detector by the fiber probe. Not all of the scattered ray can be detected. Only the scattered ray from the aperture of a fiber probe can be detected. We propose to improve an image by detecting the state of scattered ray and a new method to maintain the probe sample distance constant by keeping the quantity of scattered ray constant.