Magnetically induced forward scattering at visible wavelengths in silicon nanosphere oligomers

Electromagnetically induced transparency is a type of quantum interference that induces near-zero reflection and near-perfect transmission. As a classical analogy, metal nanostructure plasmonic 'molecules' produce plasmon-induced transparency conventionally. Herein, an electromagnetically induced transparency interaction is demonstrated in silicon nanosphere oligomers, wherein the strong magnetic resonance couples with the electric gap mode effectively to markedly suppress reflection. As a result, a narrow-band transparency window created at visible wavelengths, called magnetically induced transparency, is easily realized in nearly touching silicon nanospheres, exhibiting low dependence on the number of spheres and aggregate states compared with plasmon induced transparency. A hybridization mechanism between magnetic and electric modes is proposed to pursue the physical origin, which is crucial to build all-dielectric metamaterials. Remarkably, magnetic induced transparency effect exhibiting near-zero reflection and near-perfect transmission causes light to propagate with no extra phase change. This makes silicon nanosphere oligomers promising as a unit cell in epsilon-near-zero metamaterials.