Enhanced transmission and reflection of few-cycle pulses by a single slit.

We show that a physical mechanism responsible for the enhanced transmission and reflection of ultrashort (few-cycle) pulses by a single subwavelength slit in a thick metallic film is the Fabry-Perot-like resonant excitation of stationary, quasistationary, and nonstationary waves inside the slit, which leads to the field enhancement inside and around the slit. The mechanism is universal for any pulse-scatter system, which supports the stationary resonances. We point out that there is a pulse duration limit below which the slit does not support the intraslit resonance.

[1]  Y. Ben-Aryeh,et al.  Tunneling of evanescent waves into propagating waves , 2006 .

[2]  M. Mechler,et al.  Resonant backward scattering of light by a subwavelength metallic slit with two open sides , 2005, physics/0505211.

[3]  S. Silvestri,et al.  Characterization of femtosecond light pulses coupled to hollow-pyramid near-field probes: Localization in space and time , 2005 .

[4]  M. Mansuripur,et al.  Transmission of light through slit apertures in metallic films , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics.

[5]  A. Borisov,et al.  Role of electromagnetic trapped modes in extraordinary transmission in nanostructured materials , 2004, physics/0410272.

[6]  C. Ropers,et al.  Femtosecond light pulse propagation through metallic nanohole arrays: The role of the dielectric substrate. , 2004, Optics express.

[7]  J. Pendry,et al.  Mimicking Surface Plasmons with Structured Surfaces , 2004, Science.

[8]  A. Dechant,et al.  Femtosecond optical pulse propagation in subwavelength metallic slits , 2004 .

[9]  L. Solymar,et al.  Pulse delay and propagation through subwavelength metallic slits. , 2003, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[10]  W. Barnes,et al.  Surface plasmon subwavelength optics , 2003, Nature.

[11]  R. Wannemacher,et al.  Propagation of femtosecond light pulses through near-field optical aperture probes. , 2002, Ultramicroscopy.

[12]  D. Bergman,et al.  Coherent control of femtosecond energy localization in nanosystems. , 2002, Physical review letters.

[13]  J. Pendry,et al.  Evanescently coupled resonance in surface plasmon enhanced transmission , 2001 .

[14]  Mark Lee,et al.  Terahertz pulse propagation through small apertures , 2001 .

[15]  Y. Takakura,et al.  Optical resonance in a narrow slit in a thick metallic screen. , 2001, Physical review letters.

[16]  U. Keller,et al.  Femtosecond pump-probe near-field optical microscopy , 1999 .

[17]  H. Lezec,et al.  Extraordinary optical transmission through sub-wavelength hole arrays , 1998, Nature.

[18]  M Isaacson,et al.  Near-field diffraction by a slit: implications for superresolution microscopy. , 1986, Applied optics.