Incident Polarization Independence of Topographic Artifacts in Scattering-Type Near-Field Microscopy

We demonstrate that topographic artifacts are independent of optical polarizations of incident light in reflection-mode scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy. Experiments were performed for incident p- and s-polarizations with respect to the incident plane of a diffraction grating. The experimental results show good agreement with the simulation images. This study may be useful for the investigation of the optical properties of nanostructures affected by incident polarizations in scattering-type near-field microscopy.