Extraordinary tuning of a nanocavity by a near-field probe

We report here an experimental observation of an extraordinary near-field interaction between a local probe and a small-volume solid-state nanocavity. We directly compare the normally observed near-field interaction regime driven by the perturbation theory and then report the extraordinary interaction regime. Subsequently, we show that the cavity can take up to 2 min to recover from this interaction after removing the probe and that leads to an extraordinary blue-shift of the cavity resonance wavelength (∼15 nm) which depends on the probe motion above the cavity and not the position. The reasons for this effect are not fully understood yet but we try to give some explanations.

► We observed an anomalous interaction between a probe and a photonic 1D nanocavity. ► We compare the measurements with previous reported “normal” behavior. ► We observed times constants of several tenth of seconds in the phenomenon. ► The shift was found to be a blue-shift of 15 nm depending on the probe motion. ► We tried a few experiments suggesting that trapped water is released from the cavity.