Terahertz near-field enhancement in narrow rectangular apertures on metal film

We report huge field accumulations in rectangular aperture arrays on thin metal film by using shape resonance in THz frequency region. A huge far-field transmission enhancement is observed in samples of various widths ranging from 10 mu m to 1.8 mu m which correspond to only an order of lambda/100. Theoretical calculations based on vector diffraction theory indicates 230 times near-field enhancement in case of the 1.8 mu m wide rectangular aperture. Transmission measurement through the single rectangular aperture shows that the shape resonance, not the periodicity, is mainly responsible for the transmission enhancement and the corresponding field enhancement. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America