The role of propagating and evanescent waves in scanning near-field optical microscopy

Theoretical study on the image formation in scanning near-field optical microscopy is carried out in the framework of the direct moment method. Information brought, respectively, by the propagating and evanescent components in the optical near field that is collected by a scanning fiber tip with a sub-wavelength aperture is numerically and systematically analyzed in the light of the resolution achieved by the microscope. The analyses reveal that resolutions beyond the diffraction limit can be achieved even in the absence of the evanescent waves. That is, it is incorrect or at least incomplete to believe that a microscope that collects only the propagating waves is limited by the diffraction. Our studies show that a scanning near-field optical microscope can achieve resolutions beyond the diffraction limit by collecting only the propagating waves.