Newton's Rings in Near-Field Optics

Published

January 1, 2001

Author(s)

Lori S. Goldner, Jeeseong Hwang, Garnett W. Bryant, Michael J. Fasolka, P Absil, J V. Hryniewicz, F G. Johnson, H Shen, P T. Ho

Abstract

We show how Newton's rings manifest themselves in near-field scanning optical microscopy and discuss how this effect can be used with topographic imaging to measure correlated roughness of thin films. In conventional optics, transmission through a thin nonabsorbing film depends on film thickness when multiple reflectionsfrom the film boundaries are coherent. Measurements and modeling of the transmission through thin films illuminated by a near-field probe show that these oscillations are present despite the large distribution of transverse wavevectors needed to describe light from the probe.

Citation

Applied Physics Letters

Volume

78

Issue

No. 5

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Correlated roughness, microscopy, near-field optics, near-field scanning optical microscopy, NSOM

Citation

Goldner, L. , Hwang, J. , Bryant, G. , Fasolka, M. , Absil, P. , Hryniewicz, J. , Johnson, F. , Shen, H. and Ho, P. (2001), Newton's Rings in Near-Field Optics, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=841472 (Accessed October 17, 2025)