Near-field optical microscopy of plasmonic effects in anisotropic metamaterials

Anisotropic plasmonic metamaterials are studied by means of scanning near-field optical dynamic polarimetry. Absolute measurements of near-field linear dichroism are performed for an array of plasmonic nanowires by measuring the linear dichroism value at the edge of the sample. The data are processed according to the Jones calculus. The results indicate nonuniform distribution of the linear dichroism value in the subwavelength vicinity of the sample with the mean value of -0.21 ± 0.03 which is in agreement with its far-field value of -0.20 ± 0.02.