Abstract

In this letter we present a physical model, both theoretically and experimentally, which describes the mechanism for the conversion of evanescent photons into propagating photons detectable by an imaging system. The conversion mechanism consists of two physical processes, near-field Mie scattering enhanced by morphology dependant resonance and vectorial diffraction. For dielectric probe particles, these two processes lead to the formation of an interference-like pattern in the far-field of a collecting objective. The detailed knowledge of the far-field structure of converted evanescent photons is extremely important for designing novel detection systems. This model should find broad applications in near-field imaging, optical nanometry and near-field metrology.

© 2004 Optical Society of America

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History
Original Manuscript: September 1, 2004
Revised Manuscript: October 12, 2004
Published: November 1, 2004

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Author Affiliations

Djenan Ganic, Xiaosong Gan, Min Gu

Centre for Micro-Photonics, Swinburne University of Technology

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