Advanced methods on computational electromagnetics and their application to the study of plasmonics and metamaterials

Resumo

Over the last decade, plasmonic nanoparticles have attracted much attention due to their ability to greatly enhance and concentrate light into deep-subwavelength volumes, far beyond the diffraction limit. The prospect of innovative applications in nanoscience has led to a rise in the research endeavors devoted to plasmonics, paving the way to a great deal of potential leading-edge applications, from cancer therapy to deep-subwavelength optical microscopy and lithography, molecular response enhancement, enhanced solar cells, nanolasing, quantum optics, and wireless optical communications, among others. Moreover, the possibility of using plasmonic structures as building elements of artificial materials¿metamaterials¿with unconventional electromagnetic and optical properties, such as a negative refractive index, and the subsequent extraordinary possibilities opening up, like perfect lenses or cloaking devices, has driven a similar boost in this field of metamaterials. Howerever, the frontiers in the research field of nanoplasmonics are not seldom hampered by the limits imposed by available electromagnetic analysis tools, which tend to struggle when addressing realistic systems with several-wavelength electric sizes. This thesis extends the applicability of surface integral equation (SIE) method of moments (MoM) formulations, expedited via fast multipole methods (FMM), from perfect conductors to penetrable piecewise homogeneous bodies, and demonstrates that this approach can effectively model the scattering of light with large nanoplasmonic assemblies. The author believes that the proposed Maxwell¿s equation-based methodology raises the bar of full-wave simulations in the field of nanoplasmonics to an unprecedented level of complexity.