Beam focusing through a tapered subwavelength aperture surrounded by dielectric surface gratings

A novel plasmonic nanolens formed by a tapered subwavelength metal slit surrounded by surface dielectric gratings is proposed and demonstrated numerically. By patterning surface corrugations on the output surface, the beam can be focused, by regulating the aperture, the focal length can be controlled effectively. Numerical simulations using Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method coupled with anisotropic perfectly matched layer (APML) boundary conditions verify that the proposed metallic lens can focus the radiation on the scale of a wavelength below the substrate and the method is effective for the design of nano-optical devices such as optical microprobes.