Nonradiating anapole states in nanophotonics: from fundamentals to applications

TL;DR

This paper reviews the development and potential applications of nonradiating anapole states in nanophotonics, highlighting recent advances and future research directions in this rapidly evolving field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of anapole states, including their fundamental concepts, recent physical effects, and emerging applications in nanophotonics.

Findings

Realization of anapole states in nanophotonics

Potential applications in lasing, sensing, and nonlinear optics

Rapid advances and expanding research frontiers

Abstract

Nonradiating sources are nontrivial charge-current distributions that do not generate fields outside the source domain. The pursuit of their possible existence has fascinated several generations of physicists and triggered developments in various branches of science ranging from medical imaging to dark matter. Recently, one of the most fundamental types of nonradiating sources, named anapole states, has been realized in nanophotonics regime and soon spurred considerable research efforts and widespread interest. A series of astounding advances have been achieved within a very short period of time, uncovering the great potential of anapole states in many aspects such as lasing, sensing, metamaterials, and nonlinear optics. In this review, we provide a detailed account of anapole states in nanophotonics research, encompassing their basic concepts, historical origins, and new physical effects. We discuss the recent research frontiers in understanding and employing optical anapoles and provide an outlook for this vibrant field of research.