Polarization State of Scattered Light in Apertureless Reflection-mode Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscopy

We studied the polarization state in an apertureless scanning near-field microscopy (a-SNOM) operating in reflection mode by using three-dimensional Finite-difference Time-domain (FDTD) method. As a result, the electric field around tip apex in the near-field region enhanced four times stronger than the incident light for p-polarization when the tip-sample separation was 10 nm. We find that the p- and s-polarization state is maintained for the scattered light when the probe is perpendicular to the sample. When the probe is not perpendicular to the sample, the polarization state of scattered light will rotate an angle that equals to the inclination angle of probe with p-polarization illumination. On the other hand, the polarization state will not rotate with s-polarization illumination