Bifacial Metasurface with Quadrupole Optical Response

We design, fabricate, and characterize a metasurface, whose multipole optical response depends significantly on the illumination direction. The metasurface is composed of gold-nanodisc dimers embedded in glass. In spite of their nanoscale size, the dimers exhibit a dominating electric-current-quadrupole response in a wide range of wavelengths around 700 nm when illuminated from one side, and a primarily electric-dipole response when illuminated from the opposite side. This leads to two consequences. First, the reflection coefficient of the metasurface considerably differs for the two sides of illumination. Second, quadrupole excitation results in a significant local enhancement of both electric and magnetic fields around the dimers. Our experimental spectroscopic data are in good agreement with simulations obtained using a multipole expansion model.