Flying donuts: toroidal electromagnetic excitations in matter and free space
Flying donuts: toroidal electromagnetic excitations in matter and free space
The toroidal dipole is a localized electromagnetic excitation, distinct from the magnetic and electric dipoles. While the electric dipole can be understood as a pair of opposite charges and the magnetic dipole as a current loop, the toroidal dipole corresponds to currents flowing on the surface of a torus. Toroidal dipoles provide physically significant contributions to the basic characteristics of matter including absorption, dispersion and optical activity. Toroidal excitations also exist in free; space as spatially and temporally localized electromagnetic pulses propagating at the speed of light and interacting with matter. We review recent experimental observations of resonant toroidal dipole excitations in metamaterials and the discovery of anapoles, non-radiating charge-current configurations involving toroidal dipoles. While certain fundamental and practical aspects of toroidal electrodynamics remain open for the moment, we envision that exploitation of toroidal excitations can have important implications for the fields of photonics, sensing, energy and information.
Zheludev, Nikolai
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Zheludev, Nikolai
32fb6af7-97e4-4d11-bca6-805745e40cc6
Zheludev, Nikolai
(2017)
Flying donuts: toroidal electromagnetic excitations in matter and free space.
47th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics, Snowbird, UT, United States.
08 - 13 Jan 2017.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Other)
Abstract
The toroidal dipole is a localized electromagnetic excitation, distinct from the magnetic and electric dipoles. While the electric dipole can be understood as a pair of opposite charges and the magnetic dipole as a current loop, the toroidal dipole corresponds to currents flowing on the surface of a torus. Toroidal dipoles provide physically significant contributions to the basic characteristics of matter including absorption, dispersion and optical activity. Toroidal excitations also exist in free; space as spatially and temporally localized electromagnetic pulses propagating at the speed of light and interacting with matter. We review recent experimental observations of resonant toroidal dipole excitations in metamaterials and the discovery of anapoles, non-radiating charge-current configurations involving toroidal dipoles. While certain fundamental and practical aspects of toroidal electrodynamics remain open for the moment, we envision that exploitation of toroidal excitations can have important implications for the fields of photonics, sensing, energy and information.
More information
e-pub ahead of print date: 8 January 2017
Venue - Dates:
47th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics, Snowbird, UT, United States, 2017-01-08 - 2017-01-13
Organisations:
Optoelectronics Research Centre
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 405437
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/405437
PURE UUID: 576328a4-ee24-4ccb-a5bc-4bfc677faa08
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Date deposited: 03 Feb 2017 14:25
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 02:43
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