<i>Colloquium</i>: Unusual resonators: Plasmonics, metamaterials, and random media

TLDR

Super‑resolution, extraordinary transmission, total absorption, and localization of electromagnetic waves are attracting growing attention and are studied across diverse, sophisticated physical systems. The study demonstrates that all these effects can be unified by mapping each system onto a simple resonator model. The authors map each system onto a simple resonator model to describe all effects in a unified way. All these phenomena originate from wave interaction with an open resonator, and the unified resonator model explains their complex behavior and allows control via eigenfrequencies, Q factors, and coupling coefficients.

Abstract

Super-resolution, extraordinary transmission, total absorption, and localization of electromagnetic waves are currently attracting growing attention. These phenomena are related to different physical systems and are usually studied within the context of different, sometimes rather sophisticated, approaches. Remarkably, all these seemingly unrelated phenomena owe their origin to the same underlying physical mechanism, namely, wave interaction with an open resonator. Here we show that it is possible to describe all of these effects in a unified way, mapping each system onto a simple resonator model. Such description provides a thorough understanding of the phenomena, explains all the main features of their complex behavior, and enables one to control the system via the resonator parameters: eigenfrequencies, $Q$ factors, and coupling coefficients.