All‐dielectric nanophotonics attracts ever increasing attention nowadays due to the possibility of controlling and configuring light scattering on high‐index semiconductor nanoparticles. It opens a room of opportunities for designing novel types of nanoscale elements and devices, and paves the way for advanced technologies of light energy manipulation. One of the exciting and promising prospects is associated with utilizing the so‐called toroidal moment, being the result of poloidal currents excitation, and anapole states, corresponding to the interference of dipole and toroidal electric moments. Here, higher‐order toroidal moments of both types (up to the electric octupole toroidal moment) are presented and investigated in detail via the direct Cartesian multipole decomposition allowing new near‐ and far‐field configurations to be obtained. Poloidal currents can be associated with vortex‐like distributions of the displacement currents inside nanoparticles, revealing the physical meaning of the high‐order toroidal moments and the convenience of the Cartesian multipoles as an auxiliary tool for analysis. High‐order nonradiating anapole states accompanied by the excitation of intense near‐fields are demonstrated. It is believed that the results are of high importance for both the fundamental understanding of light scattering by high‐index particles and a variety of nanophotonics applications and light governing on nanoscale.

Being the polymorphs of calcium carbonate (CaCO3), vaterite and calcite have attracted a great deal of attention as promising biomaterials for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. Furthermore, they are important biogenic minerals, enabling living organisms to reach specific functions. In nature, vaterite and calcite monocrystals typically form self-assembled polycrystal micro- and nanoparticles, also referred to as spherulites. Here, we demonstrate that alpine plants belonging to the Saxifraga genus can tailor light scattering channels and utilize multipole interference effect to improve light collection efficiency via producing CaCO3 polycrystal nanoparticles on the margins of their leaves. To provide a clear physical background behind this concept, we study optical properties of artificially synthesized vaterite nanospherulites and reveal the phenomenon of directional light scattering. Dark-field spectroscopy measurements are supported by a comprehensive numerical analysis, accounting for the complex microstructure of particles. We demonstrate the appearance of generalized Kerker condition, where several higher order multipoles interfere constructively in the forward direction, governing the interaction phenomenon. As a result, highly directive forward light scattering from vaterite nanospherulites is observed in the entire visible range. Furthermore, ex vivo studies of microstructure and optical properties of leaves for the alpine plants Saxifraga “Southside Seedling” and Saxifraga Paniculata Ria are performed and underline the importance of the Kerker effect for these living organisms. Our results pave the way for a bioinspired strategy of efficient light collection by self-assembled polycrystal CaCO3 nanoparticles via tailoring light propagation directly to the photosynthetic tissue with minimal losses to undesired scattering channels.

Optical activity is a fundamental phenomenon originating from the chiral nature of crystals and molecules. While intrinsic chiroptical responses of ordinary chiral materials to circularly polarized light are relatively weak, they can be enhanced by specially tailored nanostructures. Here, nanorod metamaterials, comprising a dense array of vertically aligned gold nanorods, is shown to provide a significant enhancement of the circular dichroism response of an embedded material. A nanorod composite, acting as an artificial uniaxial crystal, is filled with chiral mercury sulfide nanocrystals embedded in a transparent polymer. The metamaterial, being inherently achiral, enables optical activity enhancement or suppression. Unique properties of inherently achiral structures to tailor optical activities pave a way for flexible characterization of optical activity of molecules and nanocrystal-based compounds.

Modern nanophotonics has witnessed the rise of “electric anapoles” (EDAs), destructive interferences of electric and toroidal electric dipoles, actively exploited to resonantly decrease radiation from nanoresonators. However, the inherent duality in Maxwell equations suggests the intriguing possibility of “magnetic anapoles,” involving a nonradiating composition of a magnetic dipole and a magnetic toroidal dipole. Here, a hybrid anapole (HA) of mixed electric and magnetic character is predicted and observed experimentally via dark field spectroscopy, with all the dominant multipoles being suppressed by the toroidal terms in a nanocylinder. Breaking the spherical symmetry allows to overlap up to four anapoles stemming from different multipoles with just two tuning parameters. This effect is due to a symmetry‐allowed connection between the resonator multipolar response and its eigenstates. The authors delve into the physics of such current configurations in the stationary and transient regimes and explore new ultrafast phenomena arising at sub‐picosecond timescales, associated with the HA dynamics. The theoretical results allow the design of non‐Huygens metasurfaces featuring a dual functionality: perfect transparency in the stationary regime and controllable ultrashort pulse beatings in the transient. Besides offering significant advantages with respect to EDAs, HAs can play an essential role in developing the emerging field of ultrafast resonant phenomena.

Dielectric photonics platform provides unique possibilities to control light scattering via utilizing highindex dielectric nanoantennas with peculiar optical signatures. Despite the intensively growing field of alldielectric nanophotonics, it is still unclear how surrounding media affect scattering properties of a nanoantenna with complex multipole response. Here we report on light scattering by a silicon cubic nanoparticles embedded in lossless media, supporting optical resonant response and. We show that significant changes in the scattering process are governed by the electro-magnetic multipole resonances which experience spectral red-shift and broadening over the whole visible and near-infrared spectra as the indices of media increase. Most interestingly that the considered nanoantenna exhibits the broadband forward scattering in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges due to the Kerker-effect in high-index media. The revealed effect of broadband forward scattering is essential for highly demanding applications in which the influence of the media is crucial such as health-care: sensing, treatment efficiency monitoring, and diagnostics. In addition, the insights from this study are expected to pave the way towards engineering