Photonic hook – a new structured sub-wavelength self-bending THz beam

Abstract

During the last several years it was discovered that an electromagnetic field can be made to curve after propagation through a simple dielectric mesoscale structure with broken symmetry of the shape or material, and that the field can bend around corners. This effect was termed a ‘photonic hook’ – it is a unique electromagnetic beam configuration behind a mesoscale dielectric Janus particle and differs from the Airy-family beams. Photonic hooks feature a small radius of curvature, which is about 2 times smaller than the electromagnetic wavelength - this is the smallest radius of curvature ever reported for electromagnetic waves. Below a brief review of the photonic hook phenomenon observed by our group is discussed.