Abstract
Optical near-fields & nearfield optics
Highlights
Optical methods provide exceedingly powerful tools in science and technology for measuring, analyzing and manipulating, from optical microscopy and spectroscopy to the characterization of ultrafast processes by femtosecond pulses and the modification of materials by intense laser radiation. When it comes to applications in the nanometer-regime, the conventional optical techniques suffer from the resolution limit – formulated by Ernst Abbe one and a half centuries ago – that light cannot be focused to a diameter much less than half its wavelength
This seems like a serious drawback for the use of optics in nanoscience and nanotechnology, since many of the nanostructures of interest are distinctly smaller than this limit of a few hundred nanometers
The optical near-field around such plasmonic structures can be enhanced by orders of magnitude compared to the incident light intensity, and can be localized in “hot spots” with a length of a few nanometers
Summary
Optical methods provide exceedingly powerful tools in science and technology for measuring, analyzing and manipulating, from optical microscopy and spectroscopy to the characterization of ultrafast processes by femtosecond pulses and the modification of materials by intense laser radiation. Germany and 2Physics Department, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstraße 10, 78464 This article is part of the Thematic Series "Optical near-fields & nearfield optics".
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