Unidirectional superscattering by multilayered cavities of effective radial anisotropy

Abstract

We achieve unidirectional forward superscattering by multilayered spherical cavities which are effectively radially anisotropic. It is demonstrated that, relying on the large effective anisotropy, the electric and magnetic dipoles can be tuned to spectrally overlap in such cavities, which satisfies the Kerker's condition of simultaneous backward scattering suppression and forward scattering enhancement. We show that such scattering pattern shaping can be obtained in both all-dielectric and plasmonic multilayered cavities at different spectral positions, and believe that the mechanism we have revealed provides extra freedom for scattering shaping, which may play a significant role in many scattering related applications and also in optoelectronic devices made up of intrinsically anisotropic two dimensional materials.