Interference of electromagnetic modes supported by subwavelength photonic structures is one of the key concepts that underpins the nanoscale control of light in metaoptics. It drives the whole realm of all‐dielectric Mie‐resonant nanophotonics with many applications for low‐loss nanoscale optical antennas, metasurfaces, and metadevices. Specifically, interference of the electric and toroidal dipole moments results in a very peculiar, low‐radiating optical state associated with the concept of optical anapole. Here, the physics of multimode interferences and multipolar interplay in nanostructures is uncovered with an intriguing example of the optical anapole. The recently emerged field of anapole electrodynamics is reviewed, explicating its relevance to multipolar nanophotonics, including direct experimental observations, manifestations in nonlinear optics, and rapidly expanding applications in nanoantennas, active photonics, and metamaterials.

All-dielectric resonant nanophotonics lies at the heart of modern optics and nanotechnology due to the unique possibilities to control scattering of light from high-index dielectric nanoparticles and metasurfaces. One of the important concepts of dielectric Mie-resonant nanophotonics is associated with the Kerker effect that drives the unidirectional scattering of light from nanoantennas and Huygens' metasurfaces. Here we suggest and demonstrate experimentally a novel effect manifested in the nearly complete simultaneous suppression of both forward and backward scattered fields. This effect is governed by the Fano interference between an electric dipole and off-resonant quadrupoles, providing necessary phases and amplitudes of the scattered fields to achieve the transverse scattering. We extend this concept to dielectric metasurfaces that demonstrate zero reflection with transverse scattering and strong field enhancement for resonant light filtering, nonlinear effects, and sensing.

An effective semi-analytical method for analysing of the Cartesian multipole contributions in light transmission and reflection spectra of flat metasurfaces composed of identical nanoparticles is developed and demonstrated. The method combines numerical calculation of metasurface reflection and transmission coefficients with their multipole decompositions. The developed method is applied for the multipole analysis of reflection and transmission spectra of metasurfaces composed of silicon nanocubes or nanocones. In the case of nanocubes, we numerically demonstrate a "lattice invisibility effect", when light goes through the metasurface almost without amplitude and phase perturbations with the simultaneous excitation of nanoparticles multipole moments. The effect is realized due to destructive interference between the fields generated by the basic multipole moments of nanoparticles in the backward and forward directions. For metasurfaces composed of conical nanoparticles, we show that their transmission coefficient does not depend on illumination direction. In contrast, the reflection and absorption can be different for the illumination from different metasurface sides, which is associated with the excitation of different multipoles. We believe, our results could be useful for analysis and understanding of the electromagnetic properties of nanoparticle arrays and pave the way for the design of novel metasurfaces for various optical applications.

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Over the last decade, plasmonic antireflecting nanostructures have been extensively studied to be utilized in various optical and optoelectronic systems such as lenses, solar cells, photodetectors, and others. The growing interest to all-dielectric photonics as an alternative optical technology along with plasmonics motivates us to compare antireflective properties of plasmonic and all-dielectric nanoparticle coatings based on silver and crystalline silicon respectively. Our simulation results for spherical nanoparticles array on top of amorphous silicon show that both silicon and silver coatings demonstrate strong antireflective properties in the visible spectral range. For the first time, we show that zero reflectance from the structure with silicon coatings originates from the destructive interference of electric- and magnetic-dipole responses of nanoparticle array with the wave reflected from the substrate, and we refer to this reflection suppression as substrate-mediated Kerker effect. We theoretically compare the silicon and silver coating effectiveness for the thin-film photovoltaic applications. Silver nanoparticles can be more efficient, enabling up to 30% increase of the overall absorbance in semiconductor layer. Nevertheless, silicon coatings allow up to 64% absorbance increase in the narrow band spectral range because of the substrate-mediated Kerker effect, and band position can be effectively tuned by varying the nanoparticles sizes.

All-dielectric nanostructures have recently emerged as a promising alternative to plasmonic devices, as they also possess pronounced electric and magnetic resonances and allow effective light manipulation. In this work, we study optical properties of a composite structure that consists of a silicon nanoparticle array (metasurface) and high-index substrate aiming at clarifying the role of substrate on reflective properties of the nanoparticles. We develop a simple semi-analytical model that describes interference of separate contributions from nanoparticle array and the bare substrate to the total reflection. Applying this model, we show that matching the magnitudes and setting the π-phase difference of the electric and magnetic dipole moments induced in nanoparticles, one can obtain a suppression of reflection from the substrate coated with metasurface. We perform numerical simulations of sphere and disk nanoparticle arrays for different permittivities of the substrate. We find full agreement with the semi-analytical results, which means that the uncoupled-element model adequately describes nanostructure reflective properties, despite the effects of induced bi-anisotropy. The model explains the features of the reflectance spectrum, such as a number of dips and their spectral positions, and show why it may not coincide with the spectral positions of Mie resonances of the single nanoparticles forming the system. We also address practical aspects of the antireflective device engineering: we show that the uncoupled-element model is applicable to the structures on top of silicon substrates, including lithographically defined nanopillars. The reflectance suppression from nanoparticle array on top of the silicon substrate can be achieved in a broad spectral range with disordered nanoparticle array and for a wide range of incidence angles.

In this Letter, we demonstrate and investigate the Kerker-type effect in high-index dielectric nanoparticles for which the third-order multipoles give a considerable contribution to the light scattering process. It is shown that the Kerker-type effect (strong suppression of the backward light scattering and, simultaneously, resonant forward light scattering) can be associated with the resonant excitation of a toroidal dipole moment in the system. This effect is realized due to the interference of the scattered waves generated by electric, magnetic, and toroidal dipole moments of high-index nanoparticles.

Resonant response of the Great Pyramid interacting with external electromagnetic waves of the radio frequency range (the wavelength range is 200-600 m) is theoretically investigated. With the help of numerical simulations and multipole decomposition, it is found that spectra of the extinction and scattering cross sections include resonant features associated with excitation of the Pyramid's electromagnetic dipole and quadrupole moments. Electromagnetic field distributions inside the Pyramid at the resonant conditions are demonstrated and discussed for two cases, when the Pyramid is located in a homogeneous space or on a substrate. It is revealed that the Pyramid's chambers can collect and concentrate electromagnetic energy for the both surrounding conditions. In the case of the Pyramid on the substrate, at the shorter wavelengths, the electromagnetic energy accumulates in the chambers providing local spectral maxima for electric and magnetic fields. It is shown that basically the Pyramid scatters the electromagnetic waves and focuses them into the substrate region. The spectral dependence of the focusing effect is discussed.