ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses how photons attempt to enter the nano-world by the first two approaches, near-field optics and nonlinear optics. When the boundary surface of a prism where light is reflected due to total internal reflection is brought near another prism within 100 nm, a part of the reflected light passes through it. This is the tunneling phenomenon of photon. Evanescent wave is generated when light is irradiated to an aperture smaller than the wavelength in a fashion similar to the prism case. If one of the aperture is assumed to be the sample structure and the other as a near-filed probe, intensity distribution corresponding to the sample surface is obtainable by detecting the light from the probe while scanning the probe in near field. This is the principle of Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscope. Near-field optical technology has been developed for Raman spectroscopy, enabling molecular vibrations to be measured with nanometric spatial resolution.