Unidirectional and wavelength-selective photonic sphere-array nanoantennas

We design a photonic sphere-array nanoantenna (NA) exhibiting both strong directionality and wavelength selectivity. Although the geometric configuration of the photonic NA resembles a plasmonic Yagi-Uda NA, it has different working principles and, most importantly, reduces the inherent metallic loss from plasmonic elements. For any selected optical wavelength, a sharp Fano resonance by the reflector is tunable to overlap spectrally with a wider dipole resonance by the sphere-chain director, leading to high directionality. This Letter provides design principles for directional and selective photonic NAs, which are particularly useful for photon detection and spontaneous emission manipulation.