The super resonance effect paves the way for a new type of refractive index sensor concept based on a mesoscale dielectric sphere

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel refractive index sensor concept utilizing the super resonance effect in mesoscale dielectric spheres, achieving high sensitivity based on Mie resonance modes and field enhancement.

Contribution

It demonstrates for the first time that super resonance in dielectric spheres can be used to design highly sensitive refractive index sensors.

Findings

Sensitivity can reach from 10-6 to 10-8

Sensor performance depends on sphere size accuracy

Field localization is significantly enhanced by super resonance

Abstract

Recently, we showed that dielectric mesoscale spheres could support so-called super-resonance effect, i.e. high-order Mie resonance modes with giant field localization and enhancement. Due to the presence of the surrounding medium leads to a significant influence in the intensity of the field in the particle, based on Mie theory we show for the first time that this effect may be use to design refractive index sensor of medium. Using the example of air as an environment, we have shown that the sensitivity of the proposed sensor concept can reach from 10-6 to 10-8, depending on the accuracy of the sphere size parameter, which is no worse than the accuracy of modern interference methods.