Theoretical and experimental study of the penetration depth of the frustrated field in a photon scanning tunneling microscope

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Abstract
The recently developed photon scanning tunneling microscope (PSTM) belongs to the family of near field microscopes based on the analysis of the field emitted in the vicinity of the sample. Its remarkable property is, in terms of resolution, to get beyond the limit imposed by classical diffraction. The analysis is carried out by means of a sharpened optical fiber which frustrates the evanescent field coming out of the sample surface. Dependence of this frustrated field on different parameters has been achieved. The author shows that the sample features can be adjusted to reduce the depth penetration in air. Therefore the vertical sensibility is improved. When studying the field decay, they also show that under specific conditions (angle of incidence, polarization, refractive indexes of the different media) it is possible to have a resonant tunneling effect allowing one to increase the detected signal while having a small penetration depth.

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