Resonant coupling of molecular excitons and optical anapoles in silicon nanosphere-J-aggregate heterostructures under vector beam illumination.

Resonant excitation of high-index dielectric nanostructures and their coupling with molecular excitons provide great opportunities for engineering adaptable platforms for hybrid functional optical devices. Here, we numerically calculate resonance coupling of nonradiating anapole states to molecular excitons within silicon nanosphere-J-aggregate heterostructures under illumination with radially polarized cylindrical vector beams. The results show that the resonance coupling is accompanied by a scattering peak around the exciton transition frequency, and the anapole state splits into a pair of anticrossing eigenmodes with a mode splitting energy of ≈200 .

Excitation of Nonradiating Anapoles in Dielectric Nanospheres.

Although the study of nonradiating anapoles has long been part of fundamental physics, the dynamic anapole at optical frequencies was only recently experimentally demonstrated in a specialized silicon nanodisk structure. We report excitation of the electrodynamic anapole state in isotropic silicon nanospheres using radially polarized beam illumination. The superposition of equal and out-of-phase amplitudes of the Cartesian electric and toroidal dipoles produces a pronounced dip in the scattering spectra with the scattering intensity almost reaching zero-a signature of anapole excitation.