A resonant slit-type probe is proposed in this paper that can improve measurement sensitivity in millimeter-wave scanning near-field microscopy. The probe consists of a rectangular metal waveguide incorporating the following three sections; a straight section at the tip of the probe whose height is much smaller than the operating wavelength; a standard-height waveguide section; a quarter-wave transformer section to achieve impedance-matching between the other sections. The design procedure used for the probe is presented in detail and the performance of the fabricated resonant probe is evaluated experimentally. Experiments performed at U-band frequencies in which we reconstruct 2D images show that the sensitivity of the resonant probe is improved by more than four times compared with a conventional tapered slit-type probe. Some experimental results are compared with those obtained using the finite element method (Ansoft HFSS). Good agreement is demonstrated.

An equivalent circuit for designing a coherent power combiner using a quasi-optical resonator has been developed. In the resonator, large numbers of devices (HEMT, HBT, etc. ) are arrayed two dimensionally and mounted on a surface of a metal grooved-mirror. A newly developed equivalent circuit for the resonator has been constructed using a transmission-line model. Experiments performed at Ku-band have shown that oscillation frequencies in a 33 HEMT array oscillator can be predicted with errors of less than 1% by using this equivalent circuit.

An exchange of energy between nonrelativistic electrons and evanescent waves in an optical near-filed has been investigated in an infrared region. A metal microslit has been adopted as an optical near-field generator which produces a number of evanescent waves by illumination of a laser beam. The theory has predicted that electrons interact selectively with the evanescent wave whose phase velocity is equal to the velocity of the electrons. In order to verify the theory, two types of precise microslits with different shapes, a slot and a V-shaped groove, have been fabricated. Experiments performed using these slits at the wavelength of 10.6 µm have shown that the energy change of the electrons has varied from 2 eV to 13 eV with their initial energy between 25-95 keV for a 3.2 kW CO2 laser pulse. The measured results have given experimental verifications to the theory.