Electromagnetic Duality Protected Scattering Properties of Nonmagnetic Particles

TL;DR

This paper reveals that nonmagnetic particles with certain symmetries exhibit polarization-independent and zero-backward scattering patterns due to electromagnetic duality and rotational symmetry, enabling robust optical functionalities.

Contribution

It introduces a symmetry-based framework showing that nonmagnetic particles can have invariant scattering properties under duality and rotation, supported by theoretical and numerical evidence.

Findings

Far-field scattering patterns are invariant under duality transformations.

Self-dual clusters exhibit polarization-independent scattering.

Bodies with duality and n-fold rotational symmetry automatically satisfy the first Kerker condition.

Abstract

Optical properties of nonmagnetic structures that support artificial optically-induced magnetic responses have recently attracted surging interest. Here we conduct symmetry-dictated investigations into scattering properties of nonmagnetic particles from perspectives of electromagnetic duality with discrete geometric rotations. For arbitrary scattering configurations, we reveal that far-field scattering patterns are invariant under duality transformations, which in particular means that scattering patterns of self-dual clusters with random particle distributions are polarization independent. Based on this revelation, it is further discovered that scattering bodies of combined duality-(n-fold) rotation symmetry, for any polarizations of incident waves, exhibit also n-fold rotationally symmetric scattering patterns with zero backward components, satisfying the first Kerker condition automatically. We employ both coupled dipole theory and full numerical simulations to demonstrate those scattering properties, solely based upon nonmagnetic core-shell particles that support optically-induced dipolar resonances. Those substantiated scattering properties are fully induced by fundamental symmetry principles, and thus can survive any non-symmetry-breaking perturbations, which may find applications in a wide range of optical devices that require intrinsically robust functionalities.