Surface plasmon fluorescence microscopy: an analysis

This paper examines the imaging performance of surface plasmon microscopes operating in the far field. Until recently the accepted view has been that the achievable lateral resolution with a surface plasmon imaging system is limited by propagation decay length of the surface plasmons rather than by diffraction. We show by simulation that the lateral resolution of a surface plasmon imaging system can be comparable to that of the best optical microscopes. We also show that new imaging modes such as two-photon and also second harmonic surface plasmon microscopy are extremely promising imaging modes that may be expected to be powerful techniques for the analysis of surface structures.