Metal-cladded dielectric cylinders with submicron diameters may serve to model coated tips used in near-field scanning optical microscopy. The signal measured may be greatly influenced by resonance effects due to eigenmodes of the probe. Especially, using a photon scanning tunneling microscope setup, gold-coated tips have been found to detect a signal proportional to the magnetic field distributions [E. Devaux et al., Phys. Rev. B 62, 10 504 (2000)]. This effect is attributed to cylindrical surface plasmons. We present here fully retarded calculations of the dispersion and field patterns of the nonradiative plasmon modes in cylindrical geometry. We study the effect of varying the cylinder radius on the surface plasmon dispersion, thus justifying that the cylinder is a useful model for near-field probes in spite of their slightly conical shape.

• Received 16 March 2001

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.64.125420