Quasinormal-mode analysis of grating spectra at fixed incidence angles

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing grating spectra at fixed incidence angles by expanding the scattered field into natural resonances, providing insights and tools for spectral engineering.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism to decompose grating spectra into resonance contributions with closed-form expressions, enhancing understanding and control of spectral responses.

Findings

Resonance-based expansion of scattered fields.

Closed-form expressions for resonance contributions.

Enhanced ability to engineer grating spectral responses.

Abstract

Grating spectra exhibit sharp variations of the scattered light, known as grating anomalies. The latter are due to resonances that have fascinated specialists of optics and physics for decades and are nowadays used in many applications. We present a comprehensive theory of grating anomalies, and develop a formalism to expand the field scattered by metallic or dielectric gratings into the basis of its natural resonances, thereby enabling the possibility to reconstruct grating spectra measured for fixed illumination angles as a sum over every individual resonance contribution with closed-form expressions. This gives physical insights into the spectral properties and a direct access to the resonances to engineer the spectral response of gratings and their sensitivity to tiny perturbations.