Abstract

The optical transmission through an aperture in an optically thick metal film is expected to have extremely low transmission efficiency T if the aperture diameter d is much smaller than the wavelength λ of the incident radiation, with T~(d/λ)^1/4 Surprisingly, the transmission through an array of such subwavelength holes exceeds that expected by up to several orders of magnitude, [1] and can even be larger than f the fractional area occupied by the holes.

© 2000 IEEE