An electrical analogy to Mie scattering

Abstract

Mie scattering is an optical phenomenon that appears when electromagnetic waves, in particular light, are elastically scattered at a spherical or cylindrical object. A transfer of this phenomenon onto electron states in ballistic graphene has been proposed theoretically, assuming a well-defined incident wave scattered by a perfectly cylindrical nanometer scaled potential, but experimental fingerprints are lacking. We present an experimental demonstration of an electrical analogue to Mie scattering by using graphene as a conductor, and circular potentials arranged in a square two-dimensional array. The tabletop experiment is carried out under seemingly unfavourable conditions of diffusive transport at room-temperature. Nonetheless, when a canted arrangement of the array with respect to the incident current is chosen, cascaded Mie scattering results robustly in a transverse voltage. Its response on electrostatic gating and variation of potentials convincingly underscores Mie scattering as underlying mechanism. The findings presented here encourage the design of functional electronic metamaterials.