Unidirectional superscattering by multilayered cavities of effective radial anisotropy

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how multilayered radially anisotropic cavities can achieve unidirectional superscattering by tuning electric and magnetic dipoles to overlap spectrally, enhancing forward scattering while suppressing backward scattering.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method using multilayered radially anisotropic cavities to control scattering directionality, expanding the design possibilities for scattering-based applications.

Findings

Achieved unidirectional forward superscattering in multilayered cavities.

Demonstrated spectral overlap of electric and magnetic dipoles for scattering control.

Applicable to both dielectric and plasmonic multilayered structures.

Abstract

We achieve unidirectional forward superscattering by multilayered spherical cavities which are effectively radially anisotropic. It is demonstrated that, relying on the large effective anisotropy, the electric and magnetic dipoles can be tuned to spectrally overlap in such cavities, which satisfies the Kerker's condition of simultaneous backward scattering suppression and forward scattering enhancement. We show such scattering pattern shaping can be obtained in both all-dielectric and plasmonic multilayered cavities, and believe that the mechanism we have revealed provides extra freedom for scattering shaping, which may play a significant role in many scattering related applications and also in optoelectronic devices made up of intrinsically anisotropic two dimensional materials.