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Conventional electromagnetic multipoles can be completed by complementary sources of toroidal moments, opening the door to the engineering of a unique nanophotonic device group. The main contribution of this study is 3 comparing different light sources for enhancing the toroidal dipole response in a given system. We theoretically study the toroidal dipole excitation in an individual dielectric nanodisk by structured light illumination, including the tightly focused radially polarized beam and the focused doughnut pulse. The toroidal dipole and anapole can be excited by the interplay of the radial and longitudinal components of the incident light. As opposed to the plane wave illumination, the tightly focused radially polarized light can excite a near-ideal toroidal dipole while the contributions of the Cartesian electric dipole and other modes are significantly suppressed. We also show that the focused doughnut pulse is a promising tool for exciting a resonant toroidal response in nanophotonic systems. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that toroidal-driven field confinement leads to an enhancement of energy concentration inside the nanodisk that can potentially increase light harvesting and boost both linear and nonlinear light-matter interactions.

The optical anapole state resulting from interference of the electric and toroidal moments is of much interest due to its nonradiating nature. Interference of optical modes supported by a diverse range of Mie-resonant structures has found many applications, such as in biosensors and optical communication. This review provides an overview of the recent progress of anapole states in photonics. After a brief historical background, a complete mathematical description is presented. It allows one to clearly demonstrate and identify the existence of anapole states and highlight their fundamental properties. Then, we focus on the excitation of anapoles in photonics and discuss the relation to other states, such as bound states in the continuum. Finally, we discuss a series of advances that uncover the anapole potential in various applications, from nonlinear photonics and lasing to optical communication and sensing.