Theory of femtosecond light pulse propagation through near-field fiber probes

Summary form only given.The combination of near-field microscopy and femtosecond spectroscopy attracts considerable interest as it opens up a new direction for studying spatio-temporal dynamics in molecular and semiconductor nanostructures on nanometer length scales. Subwavelength spatial resolution is achieved by transmitting femtosecond light pulses through near-field fiber probes. Yet, little is known about the transmission properties of those probes for ultrashort light pulses. We present for the first time a theoretical study of the propagation of 10 fs light pulses through uncoated and metal-coated fiber probes. Our simulations are based on a two-dimensional finite-difference time domain solution of Maxwell´s equations on a grid.