Forward and backward helicity scattering coefficients for systems with discrete rotational symmetry

Ideal Kerker scattering by homogeneous spheres: the role of gain or loss

We investigate how the optical gain or loss (characterized by isotropic complex refractive indexes) influence the ideal Kerker scattering of exactly zero backward scattering. It was previously shown that, for non-magnetic homogeneous spheres with incident plane waves, either gain or loss prohibit ideal Kerker scattering, provided that only electric and magnetic multipoles of a specific order are present and contributions from other multipoles can all be made precisely zero. Here we reveal that, when two multipoles of a fixed order are perfectly matched in terms of both phase and magnitude, multipoles of at least the next two orders cannot possibly be tuned to be all precisely zero or even perfectly matched, and consequently cannot directly produce ideal Kerker scattering. Moreover, we further demonstrate that, when multipoles of different orders are simultaneously taken into consideration, loss or gain can serve as helpful rather than harmful contributing factors, for the elimination of backward scattering.

Chiral triclinic metamaterial crystals supporting isotropic acoustical activity and isotropic chiral phonons

Recent work predicted the existence of isotropic chiral phonon dispersion relations of the lowest bands connected to isotropic acoustical activity in cubic crystalline approximants of three-dimensional (3D) chiral icosahedral metamaterial quasi-crystals. While these architectures are fairly broadband and presumably robust against fabrication tolerances due to orientation averaging, they are extremely complex, very hard to manufacture experimentally, and they show effects which are about an order of magnitude smaller compared with those of ordinary highly anisotropic chiral cubic metamaterial crystals. Here, we propose and analyse a chiral triclinic metamaterial crystal exhibiting broadband isotropic acoustical activity. These 3D truss lattices are much less complex and exhibit substantially larger effects than the 3D quasi-crystals at the price of being somewhat more susceptible to fabrication tolerances. This susceptibility originates from the fact that we have tailored the lowest two transverse phonon bands to exhibit an ‘accidental’ degeneracy in momentum space.

Effects of symmetry-breaking on electromagnetic backscattering

Systems with a discrete rotational symmetry \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$2\pi /n$$\end{document}2π/n where \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n\ge 3$$\end{document}n≥3 that also have electromagnetic duality symmetry exhibit zero backscattering. The impact of breaking one of the two symmetries on the emerging backscattering has not yet been systematically studied. Here, we investigate the effect that perturbatively breaking each of the two symmetries has on the backscattering off individual objects and 2D arrays. We find that the backscattering off electromagnetically-small prisms increases with the parameters that determine the symmetry breaking, and that the increase of the backscattering due to the progressive breaking of one of the symmetries can be related to the other symmetry. Further exploration of the interplay between the two symmetries reveals that, in systems lacking enough rotational symmetry, the backscattering can be almost-entirely suppressed for a given linear polarization by deliberately breaking the duality symmetry. This duality breaking can be interpreted as an effective increase of the electromagnetic degree of rotational symmetry for that linear polarization.

Chiral Bilayer All-Dielectric Metasurfaces

Three-dimensional chiral plasmonic metasurfaces were demonstrated to offer enormous potential for ultrathin circular polarizers and applications in chiral sensing. However, the large absorption losses in the metallic systems generally limit their applicability for high-efficiency devices. In this work, we experimentally and numerically demonstrate three-dimensional chiral dielectric metasurfaces exhibiting multipolar resonances and examine their chiro-optical properties. In particular, we demonstrate that record high circular dichroism of 0.7 and optical activity of 2.67 × 10⁵ degree/mm can be achieved based on the excitation of electric and magnetic dipolar resonances inside the chiral structures. These large values are facilitated by a small amount of dissipative loss present in the dielectric nanoresonator material and the formation of a chiral supermode in a 4-fold symmetric metasurface unit cell. Our results highlight the mechanisms for maximizing the chiral response of photonic nanostructures and offer important opportunities for high-efficiency, ultrathin polarizing elements, which can be used in miniaturized devices, for example, integrated circuits.

Isotropic Chiral Acoustic Phonons in 3D Quasicrystalline Metamaterials

The elastic properties of three-dimensional (3D) crystalline mechanical metamaterials, unlike those of amorphous structures, are generally strongly anisotropic-even in the long-wavelength limit and for highly symmetric crystals. Aiming at isotropic linear elastic wave propagation, we therefore study 3D periodic approximants of 3D icosahedral quasicrystalline mechanical metamaterials consisting of uniaxial chiral metarods. Considering the increasing order of the approximants, we approach nearly isotropic effective speeds of sound and isotropic acoustical activity. The latter is directly connected to circularly polarized 3D metamaterial chiral acoustic phonons-for all propagation directions in three dimensions.

Geometric Structure behind Duality and Manifestation of Self-Duality from Electrical Circuits to Metamaterials

In electromagnetic systems, duality is manifested in various forms: circuit, Keller–Dykhne, electromagnetic, and Babinet dualities. These dualities have been developed individually in different research fields and frequency regimes, leading to a lack of unified perspective. In this paper, we establish a unified view of these dualities in electromagnetic systems. The underlying geometrical structures behind the dualities are elucidated by using concepts from algebraic topology and differential geometry. Moreover, we show that seemingly disparate phenomena, such as frequency-independent effective response, zero backscattering, and critical response, can be considered to be emergent phenomena of self-duality.

Dual-band directional scattering with all-dielectric trimer in the near-infrared region

A silicon trimer is explored to tailor unidirectional forward scattering at multiple wavelengths in the near-infrared region with low loss using theoretical calculations and numerical simulations, which leads to the dramatic enhancement in unidirectional forward scattering and suppression of backward scattering. The higher moments in the trimer can be properly excited and balanced by breaking the symmetry of the trimer. The generalized Kerker conditions at two different wavelengths can be achieved in the trimer to further improve the scattering directivity. Our results provide insights into future development of all-dielectric low-loss nanoantennas in the near-infrared region.

Disorder-Induced Phase Transitions in the Transmission of Dielectric Metasurfaces

Light interaction with disordered materials is both complex and fascinating at the same time. Here, we reveal disorder-induced phase transitions in a dielectric Huygens' metasurface made from silicon nanocylinders that simultaneously support an electric and magnetic dipole resonance. Depending on the degree of positional disorder and the spectral detuning of the two resonances, the phase angle of the transmission coefficient exhibits a clear phase transition from normal to anomalous dispersion. Combined with the considerations of whether the resonances of spectrally detuned particles appear as separated or overlapping, we distinguish four different phase states. We study this phenomenon analytically by employing dipole particles and disclose the entire phase diagram, support our insights with full-wave simulations of actual structures, and corroborate the findings with experimental results. Unveiling this phenomenon is a milestone simultaneously in the growing fields of metamaterial-inspired silicon nanophotonics, photonics in disordered media, and the fundamental physics of phase transitions.

Broadband suppression of backscattering at optical frequencies using low permittivity dielectric spheres

The exact suppression of backscattering from rotationally symmetric objects requires dual symmetric materials where ε _r = μ _r. This prevents their design at many frequency bands, including the optical one, because magnetic materials are not available. Electromagnetically small non-magnetic spheres of large permittivity offer an alternative. They can be tailored to exhibit balanced electric and magnetic dipole polarizabilities a ₁ = b ₁, which result in approximate zero backscattering. In this case, the effect is inherently narrowband. Here, we put forward a different alternative that allows broadband functionality: Wavelength-sized spheres made from low permittivity materials. The effect occurs in a parameter regime where approximate duality is met for all multipolar order a _n  ≈ b _n , in a weakly wavelength dependence fashion. In addition, and despite of the low permittivity, the overall scattering response of these spheres is still significant. Scattering patterns are shown to be highly directive across an octave spanning band. The effect is analytically and numerically shown using the Mie coefficients.

Giant circular dichroism and its reversal in solid and inverse plasmonic gammadion-shaped structures

Chiral plasmonic structures have been shown to possess large circular dichroism (CD) responses. Here, we investigate the CD responses in a solid and inverse metallic structure composed of a stacked right-twisted gammadion metallic nanoparticle and a left-twisted gammadion nanoaperture array, where a giant circular dichroism is achieved. In addition, the sign of the CD responses can be reversed through the changes of the geometric parameters. Further analysis reveals that the Fabry-Perot (F-P) resonance of cross-polarization conversion of electric field governs the change of the CD. It can be envisioned that our findings will allow further tuning and manipulation of the CD responses for tailored circular polarized light-matter interaction.

Insights into directional scattering: from coupled dipoles to asymmetric dimer nanoantennas

Strong and directionally specific forward scattering from optical nanoantennas is of utmost importance for various applications in the broader context of photovoltaics and integrated light sources. Here, we outline a simple yet powerful design principle to perceive a nanoantenna that provides directional scattering into a higher index substrate based on the interference of multiple electric dipoles. A structural implementation of the electric dipole distribution is possible using plasmonic nanoparticles with a fairly simple geometry, i.e. two coupled rectangular nanoparticles, forming a dimer, on top of a substrate. The key to achieve directionality is to choose a sufficiently large size for the nanoparticles. This promotes the excitation of vertical electric dipole moments due to the bi-anisotropy of the nanoantenna. In turn, asymmetric scattering is obtained by ensuring the appropriate phase relation between the vertical electric dipole moments. The scattering strength and angular spread for an optimized nanoantenna can be shown to be broadband and robust against changes in the incidence angle. The scattering directionality is maintained even for an array configuration of the dimer. It only requires the preferred scattering direction of the isolated nanoantenna not to be prohibited by interference.

Polarization-Independent Silicon Metadevices for Efficient Optical Wavefront Control

We experimentally demonstrate a functional silicon metadevice at telecom wavelengths that can efficiently control the wavefront of optical beams by imprinting a spatially varying transmittance phase independent of the polarization of the incident beam. Near-unity transmittance efficiency and close to 0-2π phase coverage are enabled by utilizing the localized electric and magnetic Mie-type resonances of low-loss silicon nanoparticles tailored to behave as electromagnetically dual-symmetric scatterers. We apply this concept to realize a metadevice that converts a Gaussian beam into a vortex beam. The required spatial distribution of transmittance phases is achieved by a variation of the lattice spacing as a single geometric control parameter.

Tapered N-helical metamaterials with three-fold rotational symmetry as improved circular polarizers

Chiral helix-based metamaterials can potentially serve as compact and broadband circular polarizers. We have recently shown that the physics of structures composed of multiple intertwined helices, so called N-helices with N being an integer multiple of 4, is distinct from that of structures made of single circular helices (N = 1). In particular, undesired circular polarization conversion is strictly eliminated for N = 4 helices arranged on a square lattice. However, the fabrication of such structures for infrared/visible operation wavelengths still poses very significant challenges. Thus, we here revisit the possibility of reducing N from 4 to 3, which would ease micro-fabrication considerably. We show analytically that N = 3 helices arranged on a hexagonal lattice exhibit strictly vanishing circular polarization conversion. N = 3 is the smallest option as N = 2 obviously leads to linear birefringence. To additionally improve the circular-polarizer operation bandwidth and the extinction ratio while maintaining high transmission for the wanted polarization and zero conversion, we also investigate by numerical calculations N = 3 helices with tapered diameter along the helix axis. We find operation bandwidths as large as 2.4 octaves.