Abstract
Optical near fields exist close to any illuminated object. They account for interesting effects such as enhanced pinhole transmission1 or enhanced Raman scattering enabling single-molecule spectroscopy2. Also, they enable high-resolution (below 10 nm) optical microscopy3,4,5,6. The plasmon-enhanced near-field coupling between metallic nanostructures7,8,9 opens new ways of designing optical properties10,11,12 and of controlling light on the nanometre scale13,14. Here we study the strong enhancement of optical near-field coupling in the infrared by lattice vibrations (phonons) of polar dielectrics. We combine infrared spectroscopy with a near-field microscope that provides a confined field to probe the local interaction with a SiC sample. The phonon resonance occurs at 920 cm-1. Within 20 cm-1 of the resonance, the near-field signal increases 200-fold; on resonance, the signal exceeds by 20 times the value obtained with a gold sample. We find that phonon-enhanced near-field coupling is extremely sensitive to chemical and structural composition of polar samples, permitting nanometre-scale analysis of semiconductors and minerals. The excellent physical and chemical stability of SiC in particular may allow the design of nanometre-scale optical circuits for high-temperature and high-power operation.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge discussions with M. Stark, A. Otto, R. Helbig, R. Guckenberger and J. Plitzko. Supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
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Hillenbrand, R., Taubner, T. & Keilmann, F. Phonon-enhanced light–matter interaction at the nanometre scale. Nature 418, 159–162 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature00899
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature00899
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