Total optical transmission through a small hole in a metal waveguide screen.

We present the theory of total optical transmission through a small hole in metal waveguide screen. Unlike past works on extraordinary optical transmission using arrays, there is only a single hole; yet, the theory predicts total transmission for a perfect electric conductor (not normalized to the hole size) 100% transmission, regardless of how small the hole. This is very surprising considering the usual application of Bethe's theory to waveguide apertures. Comprehensive numerical simulations agree well with the theory and their modal-analysis supports the proposed evanescent-mode mechanism for total transmission. These simulations are extended to show the influence of realistic material response (including loss) at microwave and visible-infrared frequencies. Due to the strong resonant field localization and transmission from only a thin metal screen with a single hole, many promising applications arise for this phenomenon including filtering, sensing, plasma generation, nonlinear optics, spectroscopy, heating, optical trapping, near-field microscopy and cavity quantum electrodynamics. (c) 2009 Optical Society of America