Beyond Bounds on Light Scattering with Complex Frequency Excitations

Abstract

Light scattering is one of the most established wave phenomena in optics, lying at the heart of light-matter interactions and of crucial importance for nanophotonic applications. Passivity, causality and energy conservation imply strict bounds on the degree of control over scattering from small particles, with implications on the performance of many optical devices. Here, we demonstrate that these bounds can be surpassed by considering excitations at complex frequencies, yielding extreme scattering responses as tailored nanoparticles reach a quasi-steady-state regime. These mechanisms can be used to engineer light scattering of nanostructures beyond conventional limits for noninvasive sensing, imaging, and nanoscale light manipulation.

References in corpus (7)

• Directional visible light scattering by silicon nanoparticles
• Light scattering and surface plasmons on small spherical particles
• Angle-Suppressed Scattering and Optical Forces on Submicron Dielectric Particles
• Transverse scattering and generalized Kerker effects in all-dielectric Mie-resonant meta-optics
• Virtual Parity-Time Symmetry
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Higher-order Skin Effect through a Hermitian-non-Hermitian Correspondence and Its Observation in an Acoustic Kagome Lattice
• Tunable virtual gain in resonantly absorbing media
• Symmetry-driven Phononic Metamaterials
• Virtual perfect absorption in resonant media and their PT-symmetric generalizations
• Effective quality factor of mechanical resonators under complex-frequency excitations