Long-Range Dipole-Dipole Interaction and Anomalous F\"{o}rster Energy Transfer across Hyperbolic Meta Material

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that hyperbolic metamaterials can significantly enhance radiative energy transfer between donor-acceptor pairs, surpassing traditional plasmonic materials, with potential applications in heat transfer and quantum technologies.

Contribution

It reveals that hyperbolic metamaterials enable giant dipole-dipole interactions and energy transfer rates, validated by both exact and effective medium theory calculations.

Findings

Enhancement of up to three orders of magnitude in energy transfer rates.

Significant dipole-dipole interactions at distances of the order of a wavelength.

Comparison of exact S-matrix results with effective medium theory shows good agreement.

Abstract

We study radiative energy transfer between a donor-acceptor pair across a hyperbolic metamaterial slab. We show that similar to a perfect lens a hyperbolic lens allows for giant energy transfer rates. For a realistic realization of a hyperbolic multilayer metamaterial we find an enhancement of up to three orders of magnitude with respect to the transfer rates across a plasmonic silver film of the same size especially for frequencies which coincide with the epsilon-near zero and the epsilonnear pole frequencies. Furthermore, we compare exact results based on the S-matrix method with results obtained from effective medium theory. Our finding of very large dipole-dipole interaction at distances of the order of a wavelength has important consequences for producing radiative heat transfer, quantum entanglement etc.