Plasmon-based tomographic microscopy.

The imaging principle of the scanning surface plasmon microscope (SSPM) springs from the high sensitivity of surface plasmons to modifications of material properties near the dielectric-metal interface. In this paper, we show that tomographic techniques can be applied to SSPM imaging of dielectric objects to reach resolutions beyond the diffraction-limited half-wavelength scale. Furthermore, this high resolution is not limited to the multiple scattering regime. Finally, we conclude that SSPM is less sensitive to noise because it provides higher contrast ratio than other far-field microscopies.