Near- and far-field optical properties of embedded scatters in AgOx-type super-resolution near-field structures.

In recent near-field optical recording techniques, the super-resolution near-field structures (super-RENS) have been successfully demonstrated to overcome the diffraction limit. To realize the possibility of replacing the conventional near-field optical probe by the super-RENS, and to understand the relations between the near-field enhancements and detectable far-field signals, we use the two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to study the near-field and far-field properties of different types of embedded scatters in the AgOx-type super-RENS.