Recently a hypothesis explaining the non-resonant mechanism of subwavelength imaging granted by a dielectric microsphere has been suggested. In accordance to the hypothesis, the far-field image of a subwavelength scatterer strongly coupled to a microsphere by near fields is offered by the scatterer polarization normal to the sphere surface. The radiation of a closely located normally oriented dipole is shaped by the microsphere so that the transmitted wave beam has a practically flat phase front. Then this beam turns out to be imaging -- keeping the subwavelength information about the dipole location. However, this mechanism of subwavelength imaging was only supposed in our previous paper. In this paper, we present a theoretical study which confirms this hypothesis and better explains the underlying physics. In several scenarios of the imaging beam evolution either a flat or a slightly diverging phase front of the hollow wave beam formed by a microsphere enables the deeply subwavelength ($0.1-0.2λ$) resolution of two dipole sources. We numerically simulate one of these scenarios -- that one in which the focusing lens is located closer than the Rayleigh diffraction length to the beam-forming microsphere and represents a microsphere itself. In our simulations we replace a 3D microsphere by a 2D "sphere" (microcylinder) so that to use an available electromagnetic solver for dielectric microparticles of very large optical sizes. The physical mechanism of the imaging does not suffer of this replacement.
In this work we report a theoretical study of the lateral resolution granted by a simple glass microcylinder. In this 2D study, we had in mind the 3D analogue -- a microsphere whose ability to form a deeply subwavelength and strongly magnified image of submicron objects has been known since 2011. Conventionally, the microscope in which such the image is observed is tuned so that to see the areas behind the microsphere. This corresponds to the location of the virtual source formed by the microsphere at a distance longer than the distance of the real source to the miscroscope. Recently, we theor…
We experimentally demonstrate orbiting of isotropic, dielectric microparticles around an optical nanofiber that guides elliptically polarized fundamental modes. The driving transverse radiation force appears in the evanescent electromagnetic fields due to orbital angular momentum. The force direction is opposite to that of the energy flow circulation around the nanofiber. Our results verify the theoretically predicted negative optical torque on a sufficiently large particle in the vicinity of a nanofiber.
We consider light-induced binding and motion of dielectric microparticles in an optical waveguide that gives rise to a back-action effect such as light transmission oscillating with time. Modeling the particles by dielectric slabs allows us to solve the problem analytically and obtain a rich variety of dynamical regimes both for Newtonian and damped motion. This variety is clearly reflected in temporal oscillations of the light transmission. The characteristic frequencies of the oscillations are within the ultrasound range of the order of $10^{5}$ Hz for micron size particles and injected powe…
The possibility of overcoming the critical condition for localized photonic nanojet upon plane optical wave diffraction at mesoscale dielectric particle, which is commonly known as "the refractive index contrast is less than two", was recently reported in our works. To this end, the novel geometrical scheme of photonic nanojet generation in "reflection mode" was proposed based on a super-contrast microparticle (n~2) placed near a flat mirror. In this paper, through the numerical FDTD calculations of optical near-field structure of 2D and 3D dielectric microparticles (cylinder, sphere) we exten…
We demonstrate theoretically a large transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (TMOKE) in subwavelength gratings consisting of alternating magneto-insulating and nonmagnetic dielectric nanostripes. The reflectivity of the grating reaches $96\%$ at the frequencies corresponding to the maximum of the TMOKE response. The combination of a large TMOKE response and high reflectivity is important for applications in $3$D imaging, magneto-optical data storage, and magnonics.
Role of the normal polarization in the far-field subwavelength imaging granted by a dielectric microsphere or microcylinder is discussed and the hypotheses explaining this experimental fact are suggested. One of these hypotheses is confirmed by exact numerical simulations. This mechanism of the magnifying superlens operation is based on the excitation of creeping waves at a curved dielectric interface by a normally polarized dipole. The set of creeping waves after their ejection from the surface creates an imaging beam which may mimic either a Bessel beam or a Mathieu beam depending on the mic…
The optical absorption properties of graphene wrapped dielectric particles have been investigated by using Mie scattering theory and exact multi-scattering method. It is shown that subwavelength strong absorption in infrared spectra can take place in such systems due to the excitation of plasmon resonance in graphene. The absorption characteristics and efficiency are tunable by varying Fermi level and damping constant of graphene, or by changing size and dielectric constant of small particles. For a cluster of these particles, the absorption characteristics are also affected by the separation …
The fundamental guided dispersion characteristics of guided light in a subwavelength dielectric slit channel embedded by two different plasmonic metals are investigated when varying the gap width. As a result, an overall and salient picture of the guided dispersion characteristics is obtained over a wide spectrum range below and above the plasma frequencies of the two different plasmonic metals, which is important preliminary information for analyzing this type of subwavelength waveguide. In particular, the effects of using two different metals on the guided mode dispersions are emphasized in …
Recent progress in nanoscale optical physics is associated with the development of a new branch of nanophotonics exploring strong Mie resonances in dielectric nanoparticles with high refractive index. The high-index resonant dielectric nanostructures form building blocks for novel photonic metadevices with low losses and advanced functionalities. However, unlike extensively studied cavities in photonic crystals, such dielectric resonators demonstrate low quality factors (Q-factors). Here, we uncover a novel mechanism for achieving giant Q-factors of subwavelength nanoscale resonators by realiz…
The ability to highly localize light with strong electric field enhancement is critical for enabling higher efficiency solar cells, light sources, and modulators. While deep subwavelength modes can be realized with plasmonic resonators, large losses in these metal structures preclude most practical applications. We developed an alternative approach to achieving subwavelength confinement that is not accompanied by inhibitive losses. We experimentally demonstrate a dielectric bowtie photonic crystal structure that supports mode volumes commensurate with plasmonic elements and quality factors tha…
Generation of a photonic nanojet by a linearly polarized wave beam or a plane wave impinging a dielectric microcylinder implies partial conversion of the propagating waves into the evanescent ones. This conversion is manifested in nanojet waist of subwavelength effective width. However, this known near-field effect is relatively weak. We theoretically show that the incidence of a wave beam formed by two plane waves enables much stronger near-field effects: a deeply subwavelength focusing of the incident beam and a strong enhancement of the electric field on the whole cylinder surface and near …
The hybrid plasmonic waveguide consists of a high-permittivity dielectric nanofiber embedded in a low-permittivity dielectric near a metal surface. This architecture is considered as one of the most perspective candidates for long-range subwavelength guiding. We present qualitative analysis and numerical results which reveal advantages of the special waveguide design when dielectric constant of the cylinder is greater than the absolute value of the dielectric constant of the metal. In this case the arbitrary subwavelength mode size can be achieved by controlling the gap width. Our qualitative …
Besides purely academic interest, giant field enhancement within subwavelength particles at light scattering of a plane electromagnetic wave is important for numerous applications ranging from telecommunications to medicine and biology. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the enhancement of the intensity of the magnetic field in a high-index dielectric cylinder at the proximity of the dipolar Mie resonances by more than two orders of magnitude for both the TE and TM polarizations of the incident wave. We present a complete theoretical explanation of the effect and show that the phenom…
Symmetry principles and theorems are of crucial importance in optics. Indeed, from one side they allow to get direct insights into phenomena by eliminating unphysical interpretations; from the other side, they guide the designer of photonic components by narrowing down the parameter space of design variables. In this Letter we illustrate a significant departure from the Babinet spectral complementarity in a very common and technologically relevant situation: that of a patterned conducting screen placed on a subwavelength dielectric slab. The symmetry property predicted by Babinet theorem is co…
We demonstrate that a planar and ultrathin binary lens can focus an azimuthally polarized beam with vortical phase (APV) to a subwavelength spot of transverse polarization. The results elaborates that, in the multi-layer medium, this focused spot, which is beyond the Rayleigh diffraction limitation, can be well maintained for several wavelengths after travelling through the dielectric interfaces, which is not attainable by using other vector beams (i.e., radially, linearly and circularly polarized beams) as the illuminating light. This compact optical system can be valuable in data writing and…
Multilayered structures consisting of alternating negative-permittivity and dielectric layers are explored to obtain high-resolution imaging of subwavelength objects. The peaks with the smallest |ky| (ky is the transverse wave vector) on the transmission curves, which come from the guided modes of the multilayered structures, can not be completely damped by material loss. This makes the amplitudes of the evanescent waves around these peaks inappropriate after transmitted through the imaging structures, and the imaging quality is not good. To solve such a problem, the permittivity of the dielec…
Micro-sized spheres can focus light into subwavelength spatial domains: a phenomena called photonic nanojet. Even though well studied in three-dimensional (3D) configurations, only a few attempts have been reported to observe similar phenomena in two-dimensional (2D) systems. This, however, is important to take advantage of photonic nanojets in integrated optical systems. Usually, surface plasmon polaritons are suggested for this purpose, but they suffer notoriously from the rather low propagation lengths due to intrinsic absorption. Here, we solve this problem and explore, theoretically, nume…
Imaging with a layered superlens is a spatial filtering operation characterized by the point spread function (PSF). We show that in the same optical system the image of a narrow sub-wavelength Gaussian incident field may be surprisingly dissimilar to the PSF, and the width of PSF is not a straightforward measure of resolution. FWHM or std. dev. of PSF give ambiguous information about the actual resolution, and imaging of objects smaller than the FWHM of PSF is possible. A multiscale analysis of imaging gives good insight into the peculiar scale-dependent properties of sub-wavelength imaging.
Enhanced transmissions through a gold film with arrays of subwavelength holes are theoretically studied, employing the rigid full vectorial three dimensional finite difference time domain method. Influence of air-holes shape to the transmission is firstly studied, which confirms two different resonances attributing to the enhanced transmission: the localized waveguide resonance and periodic surface plasmon resonances. For the film coated with dielectric layers, calculated results show that in the wavelength region of interest the localized waveguide resonant mode attributes to sensing rather t…
We demonstrate experimentally and theoretically that a local excitation of a single scatterer of relative dielectric permittivity ε = 6 permits to excite broad dipolar and quadrupolar electric and magnetic resonances that shape the emission pattern in an un- precedented way. By suitably positioning the feed with respect to the sphere at a ?=3 distance, this compact antenna is able to spectrally sort the electromagnetic emission ei- ther in the forward or in the backward direction, together with a high gain in directivity. Materials with ε = 6 can be found in the whole spectrum of frequencies p…
To fulfil both size and power requirements for future photonic integrated circuits, an effective approach is to miniaturize photonic components. Surface plasmon polariton (SPP) is one of the most promising candidates for subwavelength mode confinement, however, structures based on SPP are subject to inevitable high propagation loss. Here, we report an all-dielectric bowtie (ADB) waveguide consisting of two identical silicon wedges embedded in a silica cladding with a nanoscale gap. Because of successive slot and antislot effects, the gap behaves as a 'capacitor-like' energy storage that makes …
We experimentally demonstrate the effect of anomalous breakdown of the effective medium approximation in all-dielectric deeply subwavelength thickness ($d \simλ/160-λ/30$) multilayers, as recently predicted theoretically [H.H. Sheinfux et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 243901 (2014)]. Multilayer stacks are composed of alternating alumina and titania layers fabricated using atomic layer deposition. For light incident on such multilayers at angles near the total internal reflection we observe pronounced differences in the reflectance spectra for structures with 10-nm versus 20-nm thick layers, as we…
The absorption to mass ratio of the infrared arrays is enhanced to approximately 1.33 to 7.33 times larger than the previously reported structures by incorporating two design characteristics: first, the coupling of evanescent fields in the air gaps around pixels to create effectively larger pixel sizes, and, second, the use of guided mode resonance (GMR) within the subwavelength metal-dielectric gratings. The bilayer Ti-Si3N4 gratings achieve broadband long-wave infrared (LWIR, 8 to 12 um) absorption by the combined effects of free carrier absorption by the thin Ti films and vibrational phonon…
Deep-subwavelength all-dielectric composite materials are believed to tightly obey the Maxwell Garnett effective medium theory. Here, we demonstrate that the Maxwell Garnett theory could break down due to evanescent fields in deep-subwavelength dielectric structures. By utilizing two- and three-dimensional dielectric composite materials with inhomogeneities at the scale of λ/100, we show that local evanescent fields generally occur nearby the dielectric inhomogeneities. When tiny absorptive constituents are placed there, the absorption and transmission of the whole composite will show strong d…
Subwavelength dielectric structures offer an attractive low loss alternative to plasmonic structures for the development of resonant optics functionality such as metamaterials. Nonspherical like rectangular structures are of most interest from the standpoint of device development due to fabrication convenience. However, no intuitive fundamental understanding of optical resonance in nonspherical structures is available, which has substantially delayed the device development with dielectric materials. Here we elucidate the general fundamentals of optical resonances in nonspherical subwavelength …
The limited resolution of a conventional optical microscope stems from the fact that the subwavelength information of an object is carried by evanescent waves, which exponentially decays in space and cannot reach the imaging plane. We introduce here a metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL), which utilizes closely-packed high-index nanoparticles as a composite media to effectively convert and transport evanescent waves from near-field to far-field. About 20% of evanescent wave energy of an ideal point source can be directed into far-field by mSIL. This has led to the exceptional imaging perfo…
Metasurfaces are planar structures that locally modify the polarization, phase, and amplitude of light in reflection or transmission, thus enabling lithographically patterned flat optical components with functionalities controlled by design. Transmissive metasurfaces are especially important, as most optical systems used in practice operate in transmission. Several types of transmissive metasurfaces have been realized, but with either low transmission efficiencies or limited control over polarization and phase. Here we show a metasurface platform based on high-contrast dielectric elliptical na…
Edge modes of a finite-size woodpile can appear within a complete bandgap on an <010> edge. The mode area is as small as 0.066 squared half-in-vacuum-wavelengths, and the propagation loss is small. The field maxima occur at a dielectric-vacuum interface, like at a metal-dielectric interface for surface plasmon modes. The edge mode is a subwavelength-scale 2D light localization mode in non-metallic materials. Analysis of two-mode co-directional coupling between identical surface Bloch modes suggests that a large photonic crystal or surface designing would be needed for suppressing the evanescen…
The high-Q {\it subwavelength} resonances in an isolated dielectric disk modes can be achieved by avoided crossing (anticrossing) of the nonorthogonal TE resonances under variation of the aspect ratio as it was reported by Rybin {\it et al} [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 243901 (2017)]. Traversing over two parameters, the aspect ratio and the distance between two disks, enhances the Q factor by several times compared to the case of the former case of one-parametric avoided crossing in the isolated disk. Therefore successive two-parametric avoided crossing gives multiplicative gain in the Q-factor as i…
We consider propagation of transverse magnetic electromagnetic waves through a nonlinear metamaterial slab, of subwavelength thickness and very small average dielectric permittivity, made up of alternating metal and dielectric nonlinear layers. Exploiting the effective-medium approach, we prove that the output field intensity is a multi-valued function of both the input field intensity and incidence angle so that the transmissivity exhibits a novel kind of multi-stability and a pronounced two-parameter hysteresis behavior. The predicted two-parameter hysteresis physically stems from the fact t…
The interaction of magnetic dipole (MD) emitters and common photonic cavities is usually weak, which is partially due to the low magnetic near field enhancements of the cavities. Here, we show that whispering gallery modes (WGMs) of a subwavelength dielectric cavity can not only greatly boost the emission rate of a MD emitter but also bring efficient couplings between coherent MD emitters. In a WGM cavity, the maximal emission rate (γmax) of a single emitter occurs at an antinode of the field pattern. The emission of the MD emitter can also be greatly affected by another coherent one depending…
Existing methods for the localization of light at the nanoscale use either a structure with negative permittivity, by exploiting subwavelength plasmonic resonances, or a dielectric structure with a high refractive index, which reduces the wavelength. In this paper, we provide an alternative to these two methods based on a modification of the modes of dielectric resonators by means of an active medium. We show that an active medium can promote subwavelength light localization in the dielectric structure. We consider a dielectric layer of size substantially smaller than a half-wavelength of ligh…
A type of tunable plasmonic lens with nanoslits is proposed for subwavelength imaging in the far field at different wavelengths. The nanoslits array in the plasmonic lens, which have constant depths but varying widths, could generate desired optical phase retardations based on the particular propagation property of the Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPPs) in the metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) slit waveguides. We theoretically and numerically demonstrate the tunability of a single plasmonic lens for subwavelength imaging (full width at half maximum, 0.37 ~0.47) by adjusting the surrounding dielectri…
The enhancement of the photoluminescence of quantum dots induced by an optical nanoantenna has been studied considerably, but there is still significant interest in optimizing and miniaturizing such structures, especially when accompanied by an experimental demonstration. Most of the realizations use plasmonic platforms, and some also use all-dielectric nanoantennas, but hybrid dielectric-plasmonic (subwavelength) nanostructures have been very little explored. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate single subwavelength hybrid dielectric-plasmonic optical nanoantennas coupled to localized qu…
High index dielectric nanostructure supports different types of resonant modes. However, it is very challenging to achieve high-Q factor in a single subwavelength dielectric nanoresonator due to non-hermtian property of the open system. Here, we present a universal approach of finding out a series of high-Q resonant modes in a single nonspherical dielectric nanocavity by exploring quasi-bound state in the continuum. Unlike conventional method relying on heavy computation (ie, frequency scanning by FDTD), our approach is built upon leaky mode engineering, through which many high-Q modes can be …
We study light propagation in nanoscale periodic structures composed of dielectric and metal in the visible range. We demonstrate that diffraction can be tailored both in magnitude and in sign by varying the geometric features of the waveguides. Diffraction management on a subwavelength scale is demonstrated by numerical solution of Maxwell equations in frequency domain.
In this work, we present an in-depth experimental and numerical study of the short-range THz communications links that use subwavelength dielectric fibers for information transmission and define main challenges and tradeoffs in the link implementation. Particularly, we use air or foam-cladded polypropylene-core subwavelength dielectric THz fibers of various diameters (0.57-1.75 mm) to study link performance as a function of the link length of up to ~10 m, and data bitrates of up to 6 Gbps at the carrier frequency of 128 GHz (2.34 mm wavelength). We find that depending on the fiber diameter, th…
Planar dielectric subwavelength waveguides are proposed as waveguides for THz radiation. The waveguide porous design maximizes the fraction of power guided in the air to avoid the complexity that all the materials are highly absorbent in the THz region. Convenient access to the mode region makes them also useful for sensing of biological and chemical specimens in the THz region.
Electromagnetic response of dielectric resonators with high refractive index is governed by optically induced electric and magnetic Mie resonances facilitating confinement of light with the amplitude enhancement. However, strong subwavelength trapping of light was associated traditionally only with plasmonic or epsilon-near-zero structures which however suffer from losses. Recently, an alternative localization mechanism was proposed to trap light in individual subwavelength optical resonators with a high quality factor in the regime of a supercavity mode. Here, we present the experimental obse…
Metal-dielectric multilayer metamaterials with extreme loss-anisotropy, in which the longitudinal component of the permittivity tensor has ultra-large imaginary part, are proposed and designed. Diffraction-free deep subwavelength beam propagation and manipulation, due to the nearly flat iso-frequency contour (IFC), is demonstrated in such loss-anisotropic metamaterials. It is also shown that deep subwavelength beam propagation can be realized in practical multilayer structures with large multilayer period, when the nonlocal effect is considered.
In this letter, we propose a new proof-of-concept of optical nano-tweezer on the basis of a pair of dielectric rectangular rods capable of generating a novel class of controlled finite-volume near field light capsules. The finite-difference time-domain simulations of light spatial structure and optical trapping forces of the gold nanoparticle immersed in water demonstrate the physical concept of an in-plane subwavelength optical capsule, integrated with the microfluidic mesoscale device. It is shown that refractive index and distance between dielectric rectangular rods can control the shape an…
We discuss the recent advances in meta-optics and nanophotonics associated with the physics of bound states in the continuum (BICs). Such resonant states appear due to a strong coupling between leaky modes in optical guiding structures being supported by subwavelength high-index dielectric Mie-resonant nanoantennas or all-dielectric metasurfaces. First, we review briefly very recent developments in the BIC physics in application to isolated subwavelength particles. We pay a special attention to novel opportunities for nonlinear nanophotonics due to the large field enhancement inside the partic…
To improve the power efficiency of light emitting diodes (OLEDs), we developed a novel OLED structure, termed Dielectric-Nanomesh OLED (DNM-OLED), fabricated by large-area nanoimprint lithography (NIL). A dielectric-nanomesh substrate with a subwavelength nanomesh grating patterned into glass releases the photons trapped in ITO and organic layers by guided modes into leaky modes. And the dielectric-nanomesh substrate modifies the entire OLED layers into a corrugated configuration, which further lowers the parasitic resistance and hence the operating voltage. For a red phosphorescent OLED in ou…
It is common understanding that multilayered dielectric metamaterials, in the regime of deeply subwavelength layers, are accurately described by simple effective-medium models based on mixing formulas that do not depend on the spatial arrangement. In the wake of recent studies that have shown counterintuitive examples of periodic and aperiodic (orderly or random) scenarios in which this premise breaks down, we study here the effects of deterministic disorder. With specific reference to a model based on Golay-Rudin-Shapiro sequences, we illustrate certain peculiar boundary effects that can occu…
Electromagnetic scattering on subwavelength structures keeps attracting attention owing to abroad range of possible applications, where this phenomenon is in use. Fundamental limits of scattering cross-section, being well understood in spherical geometries, are overlooked in cases of low-symmetry resonators. Here, we revise the notion of superscattering and link this property with symmetry groups of the scattering potential. We demonstrate pathways to spectrally overlap several eigenmodes of a resonator in a way they interfere constructively and enhance the scattering cross-section. As a parti…
In this paper, we investigate numerically the trapped modes with near zero group velocities supported in the ring array composed of dielectric nanorods, based on a two-dimensional model. Two sorts of trapped modes in the ring array have been identified: the BCR trapped modes which correspond to the bound modes below the light line at the edge of the first Brillouin zone in the corresponding planar structure (namely the infinite linear chain); the quasi-BIC trapped modes corresponding to the bound states in the continuum supported in the infinite linear chain. According to the whispering galler…
We report on the first experimental demonstration that the microstructure based on a dielectric cuboid combined to a thin metal film can act as an efficient plasmonic lens allowing focusing surface plasmons in a subwavelength scale. By means of numerical simulation of surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) field intensity distributions in the microstructure, we observe a low divergence of plasmonic photonic jet (PPJ) and high intensity subwavelength spots at the communication wavelength of 1530 nm. Then we fabricate an experimental sample of the microstructure and study the SSP field intensity distri…
Short pitch deformed helix ferroelectric liquid crystals have numerous applications as active materials in displays, optical telemetry and biomedical devices. In this paper, we derive convenient analytical formulas to calculate the effective dielectric tensor of these materials beyond the space average approximation. By comparison with exact numerical calculations, we show that our formulas are remarkably accurate in predicting optical properties in virtually all practical situations, including the important case of large tilt angles, where the space average approximation breaks down. We also …
Subwavelength dielectric resonators assembled into metasurfaces have become a versatile tool for miniaturising optical components approaching the nanoscale. An important class of metasurface functionalities is associated with asymmetry in both generation and transmission of light with respect to reversals of the positions of emitters and receivers. Nonlinear light-matter interaction in metasurfaces offers a promising pathway towards miniaturisation of the asymmetric control of light. Here we demonstrate asymmetric parametric generation of light in nonlinear metasurfaces. We assemble dissimilar…
