Large scale simulations in the realm of nanooptics

Other conference contribution, 2010

The realm of nanooptics is usually characterized by the interaction of light with structures having relevant feature sizes much smaller than the wavelength. To model such problems, a large variety of methods exists. However, most of them either require a periodic arrangement of a unit cell or can handle only single entities. But there exists a great variety of functional devices which may have either a spatial extent much larger than the wavelength and which comprise structural details with sizes in the order of a fraction of the wavelength or they may consist of an amorphous arrangement of strongly scattering entities. Such structures require large scale simulations where the fine details are retained. In this contribution we outline our latest research on such devices and detail the computational peculiarities we have to overcome. Presenting several examples, we show how simulations support the physical understanding of these devices. Examples are randomly textured surfaces used for solar cells, where guided modes excited in the light absorbing layers strongly affect the solar cell efficiency, amorphous metamaterials and stochastically arranged nanoantennas. The usage of computational experiments will be motivated by the unprecedented insight into the functionality of such components. © 2010 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering.