title: Characteristics of metal enhanced evanescent-wave microcavities.
abstract: This article presents the concept of storing optical energy using a metallic air gap microcavity. Evanescent waves are stored in the air gap of a dielectric/metal/air gap/metal planar microcavity. For an air gap with a micron scale distance between the two metals, incident light excites the optical interface modes on the two metal-air interfaces simultaneously, being accompanied by enhanced evanescent fields. Numerical simulations show that the reflected light depends remarkably upon distributions of the enhanced electric fields in the air-gap at the optical mode excitations. The metallic microcavities have a Q value on the order of 10(2), as determined from calculations. Experimentally, a small mechanical variation of the air-gap distance exhibited a change of reflectivity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Electronic System Engineering, Ibaraki National College of Technology, 866 Nakane, Hitachinaka, Ibaraki, Japan. wakamatu@ee.ibaraki-ct.ac.jp
authors.forename: Takashi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wakamatsu
mesh_terms: D000388:Air; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D008670:Metals / Q000737:chemistry*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D055095:Optics and Photonics
chemical_list: D008670:Metals