Optimized near-field optical response via adaptive tip illumination
Abstract
The performance of tip-enhanced optical microscopy is often limited by inefficient coupling of the excitation field to the plasmonic tip apex, as well as by thermal drift and optical aberrations. Here, we demonstrate that adaptive wavefront shaping based on Zernike mode provides a practical approach to achieving robust near-field optimisation at the tip apex. Using a sequential feedback algorithm, initially using the near-field signal, we narrow the illumination point-spread function and suppress sidelobes. This demonstrates that Zernike-mode control can be used for both aberration correction and field engineering. In tip-enhanced Raman measurements of a Janus MoSSe monolayer, conventional near-field optimisation increases the signal intensity by around 1.4 fold. A second optimisation step based directly on the Raman-band intensity yields a further 5 to 15 fold enhancement, depending on the specific tips used. These results establish a systematic, optics-based strategy for optimising tip fields, providing a transferable framework for improving tip-enhanced and related near-field spectroscopies.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.15900,
title = {Optimized near-field optical response via adaptive tip illumination},
author = {Tao Chen and Wei Wang and Ziyang Gan and Daniel Repp and Jinxin Zhan and Antony George and Henrik Schneidewind and Ulf Peschel and Andrey Turchanin and Volker Deckert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.15900},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
16 pages, 4 figures