Near- and far-field spectroscopic imaging investigation of resonant square-loop infrared metasurfaces

Reviews and Highlights	Quantum Science	Molecular and Soft-matter	Ultrafast Nano-optics and Nanophotonics	Mineralogy and Geochemistry

Jeffrey D’Archangel, Eric Tucker, Ed Kinzel, Eric A. Muller, Hans A. Bechtel, Michael C. Martin, Markus B. Raschke, and Glenn Boreman
Optics Express 21, 17150 (2013).
DOI PDF

Optical metamaterials have unique properties which result from geometric confinement of the optical conductivity. We developed a series of infrared metasurfaces based on an array of metallic square loop antennas.  The far-field absorption spectrum can be designed with resonances across  the infrared by scaling the geometric dimensions. We measure the amplitude and phase of the resonant mode as standing wave patterns within the square loops using scattering-scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM). Further, using a broad-band synchrotron-based FTIR microscope and s-SNOM at the Advanced Light Source, we are able to correlate far-field spectra to near-field modes of the metasurface as the resonance is tuned between samples. The results highlight the importance of multi-modal imaging for the design and characterization of optical metamaterials.