Fundamental Limits for Light Absorption and Scattering Induced by Cooperative Electromagnetic Coupling

Abstract

Absorption and scattering of electromagnetic waves by dielectric media are of fundamental importance in many branches of physics. In this Letter we analytically derived the ultimate upper limits for the absorbed and scattered powers by any system of optical resonators in mutual interaction. We show that these bounds depend only on the geometric configuration given an incident field. We give the conditions to fullfill to reach these limits paving so a way for a rational design of optimal metamaterials.

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• Upper bounds on absorption and scattering
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• Enhanced Absorption of Waves in Stealth Hyperuniform Disordered Media
• On Super-Planckian thermal emission in far field regime
• Computational bounds to light-matter interactions via local conservation laws
• Global $\mathbb{T}$ operator bounds on electromagnetic scattering: Upper bounds on far-field cross sections
• $\mathbb{T}$-operator bounds on angle-integrated absorption and thermal radiation for arbitrary objects
• Absorption of scalar waves in correlated disordered media and its maximization using stealth hyperuniformity
• Maximal single-frequency electromagnetic response
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• Power--bandwidth limitations of an optical resonance