In understanding of the hot spot phenomenon in single-molecule surface enhanced Raman scattering (SM-SERS), the electromagnetic field within the gaps of dimers (i.e., two particle systems) has attracted much interest as it provides significant field amplification over single isolated nanoparticles. In addition to the existing understanding of the dimer systems, we show in this paper that field enhancement within the gaps of a particle chain could maximize at a particle number N>2, due to the near-field coupled plasmon resonance of the chain. This particle number effect was theoretically observed for the gold (Au) nanoparticles chain but not for the silver (Ag) chain. We attribute the reason to the different behaviors of the dissipative damping of gold and silver in the visible wavelength range. The reported effect can be utilized to design effective gold substrate for SM-SERS applications.

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The use of a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator (SLM) device to convert a linearly polarized femtosecond laser beam into a radially or azimuthally polarized vortex beam is demonstrated. In order to verify the state of polarization at the focal plane, laser induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) are produced on stainless steel, imprinting the complex vectorial polarization structures and confirming the efficacy of the SLM in producing the desired polarization modes. Stainless steel plates of various thicknesses are micromachined with the radially and azimuthally polarized vortex beams and the resulting cut-outs are analysed. The process efficiency and quality of each mode are compared with those of circular polarization. Radial polarization is confirmed to be the most efficient mode for machining high-aspect-ratio (depth/width  > 3) channels thanks to its relatively higher absorptivity. Following our microprocessing tests, liquid-crystal SLMs emerged as a flexible off-the-shelf tool for producing radially and azimuthally polarized beams in existing ultrashort-pulse laser microprocessing systems.