Superscattering of light from subwavelength nanostructures

We provide a theoretical discussion of the scattering cross section of individual subwavelength structures. We show that, in principle, an arbitrarily large total cross section can be achieved, provided that one maximizes contributions from a sufficiently large number of channels. As a numerical demonstration, we present a subwavelength nanorod with a plasmonic-dielectric-plasmonic layer structure, where the scattering cross section far exceeds the single-channel limit, even in the presence of loss.