Near-to-far field transformations for radiative and guided waves

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel Lorentz-reciprocity-based method for accurately calculating free-space and guided mode radiation patterns from near-field data, applicable even with material dissipation, aiding device engineering.

Contribution

It presents an original near-to-far field transformation technique that efficiently evaluates both free-space and guided radiation diagrams from near-field measurements, including dissipative media.

Findings

Method accurately computes radiation diagrams with high precision.

Allows evaluation of guided-mode radiation even with material dissipation.

Provides an open-source implementation compatible with various Maxwell solvers.

Abstract

Light emitters or scatterers embedded in stratified media may couple energy to both free space modes and guided modes of the stratified structure. For a comprehensive analysis, it is important to evaluate the angular intensity distribution of both the free-space modes and guided modes excited in such systems. In the present work, we propose an original method based on Lorentz-reciprocity theorem to efficiently calculate the free-space and guided radiation diagrams with a high accuracy from the sole knowledge of the near-field around the emitters or scatterers. Compared to conventional near-to-far field transformation techniques, the proposal allows one to easily evaluate the guided-mode radiation diagrams, even if material dissipation is present in the stack, and thus to simultaneously track the coupling of light to all channels (i.e., free-space and guided-ones). We also provide an open-source code that may be used with essentially any Maxwell's equation solver. The numerical tool may help to engineer various devices, such as light-emitting diodes or nanoantennas to achieve directional and efficient radiative spontaneous decays in free space and guided optics.