Toroidic and antitoroidic orders in hexagonal arrays of dielectric trimers: magnetic group approach

TL;DR

This paper explores symmetry-protected toroidal dipole resonances in dielectric hexagonal arrays of trimers using magnetic group theory, revealing conditions for their excitation and polarization sensitivity, with confirmed simulations and experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel magnetic group theory approach to analyze and predict toroidal resonances in dielectric metamaterials with specific symmetry-breaking conditions.

Findings

Toroidal and antitoroidal dipole resonances depend on symmetry breaking.

Resonances are polarization sensitive and can be tuned by symmetry reduction.

Experimental results confirm theoretical predictions.

Abstract

Herein, we investigate the symmetry-protected toroidal dipole resonances and conditions of their excitation in a new type of electromagnetic metamaterials. These metamaterials are all-dielectric planar periodic arrays of dielectric disks disposed on a dielectric substrate. The elementary building blocks of the array are trimers which are distributed in hexagonal unit supercells. The highest geometrical symmetry of the unit supercell is C6v. The analysis is fulfilled by using the representation theory of groups with the application of the magnetic group theory, which is a new approach in solving such problems. We have shown that to get access to the toroidal supermodes of the array, the unit supercell symmetry must be broken twice: firstly, the C3v symmetry of the trimer, and secondly, the C6v symmetry of the unit supercell needs to be reduced. Selection rules for the symmetric and antisymmetric orders of the toroidal dipole moments in the arrays are defined. In particular, we have shown that with the reduction of the unit supercell symmetry to the C2v group, the array exhibits the toroidal dipole resonance with an antitoroidic order. The arrays with the lower Cs symmetry can provide the resonances with both toroidic and antitoroidic orders. It is also shown that these arrays are always polarization sensitive. Full-wave simulations and experiments confirm the theoretical predictions. The suggested metamaterials can provide an enhanced light-matter interaction due to the spatially and temporally confined light in resonant systems with very high quality factors.