Transmission enhancement through square coaxial apertures arrays in metallic film: when leaky modes filter infrared light

Abstract

We consider arrays of square coaxial apertures in a gold layer and study their diffractive behavior in the far infrared region. These structures exhibit a resonant transmission enhancement that is used to design tunable bandpass filters. We provide a study of their spectral features and show by a modal analysis that the resonance peak is due to the excitation of leaky modes of the open photonic structure. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrophotometry transmission measurements of samples deposited on Si substrate show good agreement with numerical results and demonstrate angular tolerance up to 30 degrees of the fabricated filters.