Limits for Absorption and Scattering by Core-Shell Nanowires in the Visible Spectrum

Testing the limits in performance of device setups with respect to sizes and oscillation frequencies by trying every single combination of the available media can give a set of superior designs with novel properties. This approach is followed for the absorption and scattering of visible light by core-shell nanowires, whose optical thickness is simultaneously large enough to individually perturb the background field and small enough to support coherent collective operation. Numerous maximally performing particles are reported, one for each pair of the bulk materials used, providing a set of limits for the absorbed and scattered power in the presence of realistic losses. This procedure detects the supported resonances at core-shell nanorods, finds the best designs for such a simple geometry, and thus offers additional degrees of freedom in particle or metasurface modeling.