This paper reports on the excitation of surface plasmons on gold-coated nanofibre tips by side-illumination with a laser beam and the coupling of the surface plasmons to the optical fiber. The measurements show a strong dependence of the coupling efficiency on the incidence angle with a maximum coupling efficiency on the order of few percent. Moreover, the fibre tip was used as scanning probe device for measuring the beam waist of a focussed laser beam. This work is motivated by the goal to use such plasmonic nanofibre tips in quantum optics experiments with cold atoms.
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