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Toroidal dipole excitations in metamolecules formed by interacting plasmonic nanorods

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

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  • Derek W. Watson
  • Stewart D. Jenkins
  • Janne Ruostekoski
  • Vassili A. Fedotov
  • Nikolay I. Zheludev
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Article number125420
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>16/03/2016
<mark>Journal</mark>Physical review B
Volume93
Number of pages12
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We show how the elusive toroidal dipole moment appears as a radiative excitation eigenmode in a metamolecule resonator that is formed by pairs of plasmonic nanorods. We analyze one such nanorod configuration-a toroidal metamolecule. We find that the radiative interactions in the toroidal metamolecule can be qualitatively represented by a theoretical model based on an electric point dipole arrangement. Both a finite-size rod model and the point dipole approximation demonstrate how the toroidal dipole moment is subradiant and difficult to excite by incident light. By means of breaking the geometric symmetry of the metamolecule, the toroidal mode can be excited by linearly polarized light and appears as a Fano resonance dip in the forward scattered light. We provide simple optimization protocols for maximizing the toroidal dipole mode excitation. This opens up possibilities for simplified control and driving of metamaterial arrays consisting of toroidal dipole unit-cell resonators.