Abstract

Nowadays requirements of study of photonic devices, i.e., superlattice, nanoclustar, etc. are generally met by optical measurements of conventional far-field technique. However, optical studies of these structures beyond the sub-wavelength resolution have already been a subject of near-field optics. Recently, a photon scanning tunnelling microscope (P-STM) has become a powerful and indispensable tool for providing the information on optical properties with sub-wavelength resolution. Basic principle of the P-STM is a photon tunnelling between a sharpened nanometric fiber probe with a small aperture and a specimen's surface in the presence of evanescent light. It enable us not only to obtain high spatial resolution but also to evaluate near-field mesoscopic properties as well. We have recently demonstrated feasibility of P-STM technique for measurements of near-field optical properties of the optical waveguide, which is an example of passive photonic devices, and obtained optical information on scattering sources as well as the guided mode properties with sub-wavelength resolution.¹ For application to the evaluating the active devices, we present P-STM measurements of the optical properties of GaAs quantum dot-structure.

© 1995 IEEE