Anapole-Assisted Strong Field Enhancement in Individual All-Dielectric Nanostructures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that individual all-dielectric nanostructures, specifically a silicon nanodisk with a slot, can produce over 1000-fold electric field enhancements by leveraging anapole modes and boundary effects, enabling advanced nanophotonic applications.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel design of a slotted dielectric nanostructure that achieves strong external electric field hotspots, surpassing traditional oligomer-based approaches, with systematic analysis and broad applicability.

Findings

Electric field enhancement exceeds 1000 times.

External hotspots are accessible for molecules or emitters.

Design is extendable to other materials and geometries.

Abstract

High-index dielectric nanostructures have recently become prominent forefront alternatives for manipulating light at the nanoscale. Their electric and magnetic resonances with intriguing characteristics endow them with a unique ability to strongly enhance near-field effects with minimal absorption. Similar to their metallic counterparts, dielectric oligomers consisting of two or more coupled particles are generally employed to create localized optical fields. Here we show that individual all-dielectric nanostructures, with rational designs, can produce strong electric fields with intensity enhancements exceeding 3 orders of magnitude. Such a striking effect is demonstrated within a Si nanodisk by fully exploiting anapole generation and simultaneously introducing a slot area with high-contrast interfaces. By performing finite-difference time-domain simulations and multipole decomposition analysis, we systematically investigate both far-field and near-field properties of the slotted disk and reveal a subtle interplay among different resonant modes of the system. Furthermore, while electric fields at anapole modes are typically internal, i.e., found inside nanostructures, our slotted configuration generates external hotspots with electric fields additionally enhanced by virtue of boundary conditions. These electric hotspots are thereby directly accessible to nearby molecules or quantum emitters, opening up new possibilities for single-particle enhanced spectroscopies or single-photon emission enhancement due to large Purcell effects. Our presented design methodology is also readily extendable to other materials and other geometries, which may unlock enormous potential for sensing and quantum nanophotonic applications.