Trade-offs in absorption and scattering by nanophotonic structures

TL;DR

This paper formulates a multi-objective optimization framework to analyze the fundamental trade-offs between absorption and scattering in nanophotonic structures, providing bounds and insights into their simultaneous extremal performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optimization approach to characterize the Pareto-optimal trade-offs in absorption and scattering for nanostructures, including loss and reactive materials.

Findings

Derived multi-objective bounds for absorption and scattering

Numerical comparisons with various nanostructure classes

Analysis of low-frequency limits for special cases

Abstract

Trade-offs between feasible absorption and scattering cross sections of obstacles confined to an arbitrarily shaped volume are formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem solvable by Lagrangian-dual methods. Solutions to this optimization problem yield a Pareto-optimal set, the shape of which reveals the feasibility of achieving simultaneously extremal absorption and scattering. Two forms of the trade-off problems are considered involving both loss and reactive material parameters. Numerical comparisons between the derived multi-objective bounds and several classes of realized structures are made. Additionally, low-frequency (electrically small, long wavelength) limits are examined for certain special cases.