Near- and far-field study of polarization-dependent surface plasmon coupling in bowtie nano-aperture arrays

Bowtie nano-apertures can confine light into deep subwavelength volumes with extreme field enhancement, making them a useful tool for various applications such as optical trapping, deep subwavelength imaging, nanolithography, and sensors. However, the correlation between the near- and far-field properties of bowtie nano-aperture arrays has yet to be fully explored. In this study, we experimentally investigated the polarization-dependent surface plasmon resonance in bowtie nano-aperture arrays using both optical transmission spectroscopy and photoemission electron microscopy. The experimental results reveal a nonlinear redshift in the transmission spectra as the gap size of the bowtie nanoaperture decreases for vertically polarized light, while the transmission spectra remain unchanged with different gap sizes for horizontally polarized light. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, we present simulated charge and current distributions, revealing how the electrons respond to light and generate the plasmonic fields. These near-field distributions were verified by photoemission electron microscopy. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the plasmonic properties of bowtie nano-aperture, enabling their further applications, one of which is the optical switching of the resonance wavelength in the widely used visible spectral region without changing the geometry of the nanostructure.