Analysis of SNOM Measurements with Respect to Resolution and Retroactive Effects of the SNOM-probe

Near-field scanning optical microscopy (SNOM) is a method, which acquires evanescent field information, thus overcoming the Abbe resolution limit. Experimentally one finds that the resolution is in the order of several 10nm. In this talk, we analyze different influences on the resolution and we study how the presence of the SNOM-probe alters the electromagnetic field during a measurement. To this end, we utilize the recently developed LIF-RCWA [1] in order to examine this retroactive effect in a simulated SNOM measurement in collection and illumination mode and we compare the numerical result to the undisturbed electric field intensity. [1] M. Auer and K.-H. Brenner, “Localized input fields in rigorous coupled-wave analysis,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. A, Vol. 31, No. 11 (2014)