Splitting of magnetic dipole modes in anisotropic TiO₂ micro-spheres

Monocrystalline titanium dioxide (TiO₂) micro-spheres support two orthogonal magnetic dipole modes at terahertz (THz) frequencies due to strong dielectric anisotropy. For the first time, we experimentally detected the splitting of the first Mie mode in spheres of radii (Formula presented.) m through near-field time-domain THz spectroscopy. By fitting the Fano lineshape model to the experimentally obtained spectra of the electric field detected by the sub-wavelength aperture probe, we found that the magnetic dipole resonances in TiO₂ spheres have narrow linewidths of only tens of gigahertz. Anisotropic TiO₂ micro-resonators can be used to enhance the interplay of magnetic and electric dipole resonances in the emerging THz all-dielectric metamaterial technology. (Figure presented.) .