Electrodynamical light trapping using whispering-gallery resonances in hyperbolic cavities

Abstract

We theoretically study spherical cavities composed of hyperbolic metamaterials with indefinite permittivity tensors. Such cavities are capable of electrodynamically confining fields with deep subwavelength cavity sizes. The supported resonant modes are analogous to the whispering-gallery modes found in dielectric microcavities with much larger physical sizes. Because of the nature of electrodynamical confinement, these hyperbolic metamaterial cavities exhibit quality factors higher than predicted in the electrostatic limit. In addition, confining electromagnetic fields into the small cavities results in an extremely high photonic local density of states.