Abstract

Nonradiating current configurations attract attention of physicists for many years as possible models of stable atoms. One intriguing example of such a nonradiating source is known as ‘anapole'. An anapole mode can be viewed as a composition of electric and toroidal dipole moments, resulting in destructive interference of the radiation fields due to similarity of their far-field scattering patterns. Here we demonstrate experimentally that dielectric nanoparticles can exhibit a radiationless anapole mode in visible. We achieve the spectral overlap of the toroidal and electric dipole modes through a geometry tuning, and observe a highly pronounced dip in the far-field scattering accompanied by the specific near-field distribution associated with the anapole mode. The anapole physics provides a unique playground for the study of electromagnetic properties of nontrivial excitations of complex fields, reciprocity violation and Aharonov–Bohm like phenomena at optical frequencies.

Highlights

  • Nonradiating current configurations attract attention of physicists for many years as possible models of stable atoms

  • The classical analogue of a stationary anapole is the well-known toroid with a constant poloidal surface current[4]. This current distribution is associated with a toroidal dipole moment pointing outward along the torus symmetry axis

  • The existence of toroidal multipoles is required by the symmetry of the order parameters with respect to the inversions of space and time: in addition to the well-known electric polarization and magnetization (r-even and t-odd axial vector), there should be the order parameters described by an r- and t-even polar vector and an r- and t-odd axial vector[11]

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Summary

Introduction

Nonradiating current configurations attract attention of physicists for many years as possible models of stable atoms. We observe a strong suppression of the far-field scattering along with nontrivial evolution of the electromagnetic field inside a nanodisk close to the wavelength of the anapole mode excitation.

Results
Conclusion

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