Highly Subwavelength, Superdirective Cylindrical Nanoantenna

A superdirective cylindrical nanoantenna is demonstrated with a multilayered cylindrical metamaterial-inspired structure. Targeting specific scattering coefficients for the dipole and higher-order modes, the ideal limit of needle radiation is demonstrated. A five-layer system is optimized to demonstrate its approach to the theoretical directivity bound. While the resulting structure is scalable to any frequency regime, its highly subwavelength overall size (λ0/10) takes advantage of combinations of positive and negative permittivity materials in the optical regime.