Millimeter-Wave Measurements and Applications of Dipole Modes in Spherical Alumina Dimer

Dielectric dimers composed of spherical Alumina ceramic resonators are studied. The electromagnetic scattering of dimer configurations is analyzed through spherical multipole decomposition. Different configurations of dimer operation are addressed with respect to propagation direction and polarization of the incident wave. In context to forward scattering caused by dipole interaction, measurements are performed in V-band (50–75 GHz) to quantify the corresponding electromagnetic signature of the dielectric dimer. Based on the fundamental dipole modes excited in the subwavelength free-space gap along the dimer axis, electric and magnetic hotspots are proposed, which can be exploited for near-field enhancement-based applications at millimeter-wave frequency. A dedicated frequency-scaled measurement setup is designed to measure the field-enhancement factor between 25 and 30 GHz in the free-space dimer gap, corresponding well to simulated results.