Enforcing symmetries in boundary element formulation of plasmonic and second-harmonic scattering problems.

The study of metal nanoparticles and metamaterials has increased the demand for accurate and efficient numerical methods for solving electromagnetic scattering problems. The boundary element method, and especially its Poggio-Miller-Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) formulation, has received growing interest lately due to its accuracy and stability at plasmon resonance conditions. Consequently, this formulation has been used to model second-harmonic generation (SHG) in plasmonic nanoparticles, which is an area of increasing importance. Many nanostructures exhibit geometrical symmetries, whose identification is often crucial for the qualitative understanding of SHG. In this work, we present the theory and details to take advantage of these symmetries in the PMCHWT formulation. We show that, importantly, the symmetry of the medium can be exploited even though the excitation source does not exhibit a well-defined symmetry. We estimate the obtainable computational benefits and apply the method to the study of the linear and second-order nonlinear properties of multiply split gold ring resonators.

Boundary element method for surface nonlinear optics of nanoparticles.

We present the frequency-domain boundary element formulation for solving surface second-harmonic generation from nanoparticles of virtually arbitrary shape and material. We use the Rao-Wilton-Glisson basis functions and Galerkin's testing, which leads to very accurate solutions for both near and far fields. This is verified by a comparison to a solution obtained via multipole expansion for the case of a spherical particle. The frequency-domain formulation allows the use of experimentally measured linear and nonlinear material parameters or the use of parameters obtained using ab-initio principles. As an example, the method is applied to a non-centrosymmetric L-shaped gold nanoparticle to illustrate the formation of surface nonlinear polarization and the second-harmonic radiation properties of the particle. This method provides a theoretically well-founded approach for modelling nonlinear optical phenomena in nanoparticles.