Engineering non-radiative anapole modes for broadband absorption enhancement of light

In this paper, we propose a novel, frequency- and angularly-broadband approach to achieve absorption rate enhancement in high-index dielectric nanostructures through the engineering of non-radiative anapole modes. We employ multipolar decomposition of numerically computed current distributions and analyze the far-field scattering power of multipole moments. By leveraging the destructive interference of electric dipole and toroidal dipole moments, we design non-radiating anapole modes and demonstrate significantly enhanced absorbed power in silicon and germanium nanostructures. We demonstrate wide wavelength tunability of the anapole-driven peak absorption enhancement for nano-disks and square nano-pixel geometries, which can be conveniently fabricated with current lithography. Finally, by combining nano-disks and nano-pixels of different sizes into functional surface units, we design nanostructured arrays with enhanced bandwidth and absorption rates that can be useful for the engineering of broadband semiconductor photodetectors driven by controllable anapole responses. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America