Waveguide properties of single subwavelength holes demonstrated with radially and azimuthally polarized light

摘要

We investigate the transmission of focused beams through single subwavelengthholes in a silver film. We use radially and azimuthally polarized light,respectively, to excite higher order waveguide modes as well as to match theradial symmetry of the aperture geometry. Remarkably, the transmissionproperties can be described by a classical waveguide model even for thicknessesof the silver film as thin as a quarter of a wavelength.