Terahertz near-field microscopy of complementary planar metamaterials: Babinet's principle

Using terahertz near-field imaging we experimentally investigate the resonant electromagnetic field distributions behind a split-ring resonator and its complementary structure with sub-wavelength spatial resolution. For the out-of-plane components we experimentally verify complementarity of electric and magnetic fields as predicted by Babinet's principle. This duality of near-fields can be used to indirectly map resonant magnetic fields close to metallic microstructures by measuring the electric fields close to their complementary analogues which is particularly useful since magnetic near-fields are still extremely difficult to access in the THz regime. We find excellent agreement between the results from theory, simulation and two different experimental near-field techniques.