Unraveling near-field origin of electromagnetic waves scattered from silver nanorod arrays using pseudo-spectral time-domain calculation.

In this study, we report the investigation of both near- and far-field electromagnetic characteristics of two-dimensional silver nanorod arrays embedded in anodic aluminum oxide with the use of a high-accuracy three-dimensional Legendre pseudospectral time-domain scheme. The simulated far-field scattering spectra agree with the experimental observations. We show that enhanced electric field is created between adjacent nanorods and, most importantly, far-field scattered light wave is mainly contributed from surface magnetic field, instead of the surface enhanced electric field. The identified near-field to far-field connection produces an important implication in the development of efficient surface-enhanced Raman scattering substrates.