Strongly Directional Scattering from Dielectric Nanowires

It has been experimentally demonstrated only recently that a simultaneous excitation of interfering electric and magnetic resonances can lead to unidirectional scattering of visible light in zero-dimensional dielectric nanoparticles. We show both theoretically and experimentally, that strongly anisotropic scattering also occurs in individual dielectric nanowires. The effect occurs even under either pure transverse electric or pure transverse magnetic polarized normal illumination. This allows for instance to toggle the scattering direction by a simple rotation of the incident polarization. Finally, we demonstrate that directional scattering is not limited to cylindrical cross sections but can be further tailored by varying the shape of the nanowires.