Enhanced confined light transmission by single subwavelength apertures in metallic films

The diffraction of light that emerges from a metallic circular aperture is studied. Near- and far-field results are presented. Spectral angular transmitted intensities are performed versus the incident wavelength for four kinds of aperture. It is shown that, for a definite configuration, a large enhancement of transmission- compared with the basic case of a single hole-occurs combined with a spectacular angular confinement of light. Such effects are, for example, of great interest in optical near-field microscopy for which the probe is a nanosource. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.