Anomalous contrast in broadband THz near-field imaging of gold microstructures

THz scattering-type scanning near-field microscopy (s-SNOM) has become a powerful technique for measuring carrier dynamics in nanoscale materials and structures. Changes in a material’s local THz reflection or transmission can be correlated to changes in electrical conductivity. Here, we perform tip-based THz nano-imaging of subwavelength gold nanostructures and demonstrate image contrast unrelated to any spatially varying material properties. We show that the specific physical configuration of the gold structures can have a strong influence on local excitations which can obscure the sample’s true dielectric response, even in cases where the relevant structures are far outside of the spatial region probed by the AFM tip.