On the existence of pure, broadband toroidal sources in electrodynamics

Multipoles are paramount for describing electromagnetic fields in many areas of nanoscale optics, playing an essential role for the design of devices in plasmonics and all-dielectric nanophotonics. Challenging the traditional division into electric and magnetic moments, toroidal moments have been proposed as a physically distinct family of multipoles with significant contributions to the properties of matter. However, the apparent impossibility of separately measuring their response sheds doubt on their true physical significance. Here, we confirm the possibility of selectively exciting toroidal moments without any other multipole. We develop a set of general conditions that any current distribution must fulfill to be entirely described by toroidal moments, and prove our results in an analytically solvable case. Our new theory allows us to design and verify experimentally for the first time an artificial structure supporting a pure, broadband toroidal dipole response in the complete absence of the electric dipole and other 'ordinary' multipole contributions. In addition, we propose a structure capable of supporting a novel type of nonradiating source, a 'toroidal anapole', originating from the destructive interference of the toroidal dipole with the unconventional electromagnetic sources known as mean square radii. The results in this work provide conclusive evidence on the independent excitation of toroidal moments in electrodynamics.