Circular dichroism from Fano resonances in planar chiral oligomers

Abstract

Here we present a general approach for describing the physics of Fano resonances in nanoparticle oligomers. It is shown that the interference of nonorthogonal collective eigenmodes is a sufficient condition to produce Fano resonances. We then show that such nonorthogonality between eigenmodes also permits the existence of a new form circular dichroism in the absorption and scattering cross-sections, even when circular dichroism is forbidden in the extinction cross-section.