Super-Resonance: Interference-Driven Suppression of Radiative Decay Across Wave Physics

Super-resonance has been coined independently for collective modes of acoustic cavity arrays (Tolstoy), extreme high-$Q$ states of dielectric resonators in photonics, and magnon-polaron bound states in magnonics, and is now applied interchangeably to physically distinct phenomena.

We organise this review around the one usage admitting a precise, field-agnostic definition: a mode whose radiative linewidth is driven toward zero by destructive interference among its radiation channels, $\gamma_{\rm rad}/\gamma_{\rm rad}^{\rm cl}\to0$, while the bare single-channel coupling remains large.

The canonical realisation is the Friedrich-Wintgen scenario of two modes sharing a continuum.

The same non-Hermitian eigenvalue structure recurs in Tolstoy's acoustic arrays, photonic bound states in the continuum and quasi-BIC supercavity modes, anapoles, dark modes of coherent perfect absorbers, parity-time-symmetric devices near exceptional points, magnonic dark modes, and topological edge modes.

We survey these realisations field by field and distil transferable design rules and figures of merit.

We then disambiguate super-resonance from two families sharing the "super-" prefix: coherent enhancement, in which coupling to the continuum is collectively increased rather than suppressed (Dicke super-radiance, superscattering, whispering-gallery modes); and integer-commensurability locking (mean-motion, wave-particle, and Floquet resonances).

Amplification, as in black-hole super-radiance, is likewise distinguished.