Windowed Green function method for the Helmholtz equation in the presence of multiply layered media

Convolution quadrature methods for time-domain scattering from unbounded penetrable interfaces

This paper presents a class of boundary integral equation methods for the numerical solution of acoustic and electromagnetic time-domain scattering problems in the presence of unbounded penetrable interfaces in two spatial dimensions. The proposed methodology relies on convolution quadrature (CQ) schemes and the recently introduced windowed Green function (WGF) method. As in standard time-domain scattering from bounded obstacles, a CQ method of the user's choice is used to transform the problem into a finite number of (complex) frequency-domain problems posed, in our case, on the domains containing unbounded penetrable interfaces. Each one of the frequency-domain transmission problems is then formulated as a second-kind integral equation that is effectively reduced to a bounded interface by means of the WGF method-which introduces errors that decrease super-algebraically fast as the window size increases. The resulting windowed integral equations can then be solved by means of any (accelerated or unaccelerated) off-the-shelf Nyström or boundary element Helmholtz integral equation solvers capable of handling complex wavenumbers with large imaginary part. A high-order Nyström method based on Alpert's quadrature rules is used here. A variety of CQ schemes and numerical examples, including wave propagation in open waveguides as well as scattering from multiple layered media, demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach.

Inverse design of large-area metasurfaces

We present a computational framework for efficient optimization-based "inverse design" of large-area "metasurfaces" (subwavelength-patterned surfaces) for applications such as multi-wavelength/multi-angle optimizations, and demultiplexers. To optimize surfaces that can be thousands of wavelengths in diameter, with thousands (or millions) of parameters, the key is a fast approximate solver for the scattered field. We employ a "locally periodic" approximation in which the scattering problem is approximated by a composition of periodic scattering problems from each unit cell of the surface, and validate it against brute-force Maxwell solutions. This is an extension of ideas in previous metasurface designs, but with greatly increased flexibility, e.g. to automatically balance tradeoffs between multiple frequencies or to optimize a photonic device given only partial information about the desired field. Our approach even extends beyond the metasurface regime to non-subwavelength structures where additional diffracted orders must be included (but the period is not large enough to apply scalar diffraction theory).

Sideways adiabaticity: beyond ray optics for slowly varying metasurfaces

Optical metasurfaces (subwavelength-patterned surfaces typically described by variable effective surface impedances) are typically modeled by an approximation akin to ray optics: the reflection or transmission of an incident wave at each point of the surface is computed as if the surface were "locally uniform," and then the total field is obtained by summing all of these local scattered fields via a Huygens principle. (Similar approximations are found in scalar diffraction theory and in ray optics for curved surfaces.) In this paper, we develop a precise theory of such approximations for variable-impedance surfaces. Not only do we obtain a type of adiabatic theorem showing that the "zeroth-order" locally uniform approximation converges in the limit as the surface varies more and more slowly, including a way to quantify the rate of convergence, but we also obtain an infinite series of higher-order corrections. These corrections, which can be computed to any desired order by performing integral operations on the surface fields, allow rapidly varying surfaces to be modeled with arbitrary accuracy, and also allow one to validate designs based on the zeroth-order approximation (which is often surprisingly accurate) without resorting to expensive brute-force Maxwell solvers. We show that our formulation works arbitrarily close to the surface, and can even compute coupling to guided modes, whereas in the far-field limit our zeroth-order result simplifies to an expression similar to what has been used by other authors.

Stable, high-order computation of impedance-impedance operators for three-dimensional layered medium simulations

The faithful modelling of the propagation of linear waves in a layered, periodic structure is of paramount importance in many branches of the applied sciences. In this paper, we present a novel numerical algorithm for the simulation of such problems which is free of the artificial singularities present in related approaches. We advocate for a surface integral formulation which is phrased in terms of impedance-impedance operators that are immune to the Dirichlet eigenvalues which plague the Dirichlet-Neumann operators that appear in classical formulations. We demonstrate a high-order spectral algorithm to simulate these latter operators based upon a high-order perturbation of surfaces methodology which is rapid, robust and highly accurate. We demonstrate the validity and utility of our approach with a sequence of numerical simulations.