Enhancement gamma of the electrical field at the end of a tip relative to t
he incident field in a focused radiation beam is calculated by the finite-e
lement time-domain (FETD) method. First, the reliability of the FETD method
is established by calculating the electric field on simple structures like
thin cylinders, spheres, and ellipsoids, and comparing the results with an
alytical solutions. The calculations on these test structures also reveal t
hat phase retardation effects substantially modify gamma when the size of t
he structure is larger than approximately lambda /4, lambda being the radia
tion wavelength. For plasmon resonance, in particular, phase retardation se
verely reduces the resonance and the expected field enhancement for a gold
tip. The small value of gamma =4 calculated by FETD is about an order of ma
gnitude smaller than the value found in recent published work. Resonance ef
fects can be recovered for special tips, which have a discontinuity or a di
fferent material composition at the end of the tip. Some tuning of the disc
ontinuity dimension is needed to maximize the resonance. Under optimal cond
itions for plasmon resonance, an enhancement in the electric field of about
50 is calculated at the end of a small gold protrusion mounted on a wider
silicon or glass tip. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.