Strong optical angular momentum dependence of scattering of Laguerre-Gaussian beams from silicon nano-sphere clusters

Abstract

Comprehensive simulations are employed to study the interaction between Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams and chiral clusters made of silicon nano-spheres. It is demonstrated that the scattering process is strongly dependent on the orbital and spin angular momentum carried by the LG beams, an effect explained by the selective suppression or resonantly enhanced excitation of Mie modes of the spheres. We show that our results are valid both in the case of a single sphere and clusters made of such spheres, suggesting that the conclusions of our study could be applied to a broad array of applications relying on angular momentum dependent light interaction with ensembles of nanoparticles.