Coherent perfect absorption mediated anomalous reflection and refraction

We show bending of light on the same side of the normal in a free-standing corrugated metal film under bidirectional illumination. Coherent perfect absorption (CPA) is exploited to suppress the specular zeroth order leading to effective back-bending of light into the "-1" order, while the "+1" order is resonant with the surface mode. The effect is shown to be phase sensitive, yielding CPA and superscattering in the same geometry. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America