Slot antenna as a bound charge oscillator

We study the scattering properties of an optical slot antenna formed from a narrow rectangular hole in a metal film. We show that slot antennas can be modeled as bound charge oscillators mediating resonant light scattering. A simple closed-form expression for the scattering spectrum of a slot antenna is obtained that reveals the nature of a bound charge oscillator and also the effect of a substrate. We find that the spectral width of scattering resonance is dominated by a radiative damping caused by the Abraham-Lorentz force acting on a bound charge. The bound charge oscillator model provides not only an intuitive physical picture for the scattering of an optical slot antenna but also reasonable numerical agreements with rigorous calculations using the finite-difference time-domain method. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America