摘要： Nanofocusing of light in combination with an efficient energy transfer of metallic nanostructures is a key task towards ultrafast, all-optical switching on the nanoscale. A possible realization of such a device is based on two tapered plasmonic nanostructures separated by a few-nanometer gap, in which information transport is controlled via strong coupling of the electromagnetic near-field and excitonic molecules in the gap region of the waveguides. The fabrication of such mesoscopic nanostructures that can concentrate free-propagating light to few-nanometers dimensions remains challenging due to the desired nanometer precision in the gap region. Here, we report on the fabrication of a plasmonic nanostructures consisting of a pair of both striped and tapered waveguides in 200 nm thick Au films with gap sizes and radii of curvature down to 11 nm using a Focused Ion Beam-based “Sketch and Peel” lithography process. Curved focused-ion beam written gratings in the waveguides enable the in- and out-coupling and focusing of surface plasmon polaritons into the nanostructure. The propagation of these SPPs is afterwards monitored using far-field confocal microscopy. We find a relatively constant transmission of light for large gap sizes, accompanied by a drastically increase for gap sizes below 20 nm. This increase for small gap sizes can be approximated best by fitting an exponential decay with a decay length of 8 nm suggesting a significant energy transport through near-field coupling of the two waveguides. These experimental findings are in accordance to finite element method and finite difference time domain calculations that show a strong localization of the electric field in the gap region of the two waveguides. The profound electric field strength and the spatial confinement of the electric fields suggest such plasmonic waveguides as prototypical structures for probing the strong coupling between propagating surface plasmon polaritons in adjacent, however separated plasmonic waveguides on one hand and between SPP waves and single quantum emitters that are placed in the gap region of the waveguides on the other hand. The realization of such coupling could enable the ultrafast, remote switching on the nanoscale.