Near-field opticalmicroscopy of plasmonic nanostructures

Abstract

Plasmonic metal nanostructures exhibit unique optical properties, and fundamental studies of them are relevant to wide range of research areas. Unique characteristics of the plasmonic nanostructures originate from the localized optical fields and are closely related to spatiotemporal properties of plasmon waves. In this chapter, visualization of plasmon wave functions and localized optical fields by scanning near-field optical microscopy is described.