Accurate and Versatile High-Order Modeling of Electromagnetic Scattering on Plasmonic Nanostructures

Abstract: This paper presents high-order (HO) electromagnetic modeling of plasmonic nanostructures based on the Locally Corrected Nystrom (LCN) method. Advanced nanophotonic and nanoplasmonic structures involve electrically large electromagnetic structures that are very complex in both geometry and material composition. Hence, advanced analysis and design tools are required in order to predict the performance of such structures and optimize the geometrical parameters prior to costly prototype development. In this perspective, the LCN is exploited to solve the electromagnetic scattering of plasmonic nanostructures. The LCN utilizes basis functions of higher orders defined on large geometrical elements, which significantly reduces the number of unknowns for a given problem. Compared to other well-known methods for EM modeling of plasmonic nanostructures, the LCN is computationally efficient, straightforward to implement and provides exponential convergence. A full comparison, in terms of time and complexity between the proposed method and previous works for a few 3D nanoplasmonic structures are presented to validate the accuracy, efficiency and flexibility of the proposed method to simulate the behavior of electromagnetic fields in real nanoplasmonic problems.