Investigation of dipole emission near a dielectric metasurface using a dual-tip scanning near-field optical microscope

Abstract

Abstract A wide variety of near-field optical phenomena are described by the interaction of dipole radiation with a nanophotonic system. The electromagnetic field due to the dipole excitation is associated with the Green’s function. It is of great interest to investigate the dipole interaction with a photonic system and measure the near-field Green’s function and the quantities it describes, e.g., the local and cross density of optical states. However, measuring the near-field Green’s function requires a point-source excitation and simultaneous near-field detection below the diffraction limit. Conventional single-tip near-field optical microscope (SNOM) provides either a point source excitation or amplitude and phase detection with subwavelength spatial resolution. The automated dual-tip SNOM, composed of two tips, has overcome the experimental challenges for simultaneous near-field excitation and detection. Here, we investigate the dipole emission in the near-field of a dielectric metasurface using the automated dual-tip SNOM. We have analyzed the near-field pattern and directional mode propagation depending on the position of the dipole emission relative to the metasurface. This study is one further step toward measuring the dyadic Green’s function and related quantities such as cross density of optical states in complex nanophotonic systems for both visible and near-infrared spectra.