Extraordinary Optical Transmission: Fundamentals and Applications

Extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) is a term that refers to electromagnetic resonances through sets of subwavelength apertures in either a flat or a corrugated metal film, providing a larger transmission of electromagnetic fields than would be expected from the small aperture size. Since its discovery in 1998, EOT has been a very active research field, leading both to the discovery of new ways of enhancing optical transmission and to its application to sensing, color filters, metamaterials, lenses, optical trapping, enhancement of nonlinear effects, among others. This paper reviews the different mechanisms that lead to EOT, paying special attention to the new research areas and applications that have appeared in the last few years.