Joint Summer Research Conference in the Mathematical Sciences
Mathematical Modeling of Novel Optical Materials and Devices
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Steven Johnson's Abstract

Extending perturbative methods to high-contrast nanophotonics
Steven G. Johnson, MIT Applied Mathematics

Perturbative methods, which take solutions for an idealized system and exploit them to treat slightly modified structures, are of great utility for the study of many practical problems in electromagnetism that consist of small perturbations -- e.g., waveguide tapers, cavity tuning, nonlinear effects, and scattering from fabrication disorder. However, we show that several standard perturbative methods, from coupled-wave theories [1-3] to eigenvalue perturbations [4] to Born approximations (a.k.a. volume-current methods) [5] must be modified in order to accurately describe structures with high index contrast and/or strong periodicity, such as photonic crystals. We derive the corrected forms and also conclude a variety of general theorems: from the conditions for an adiabatic theorem in periodic structures [1], to the effect of a photonic band gap on radiative and reflective scattering in disordered waveguides [3], to scaling laws for group-velocity dependence of losses [1,5].

[1] S. G. Johnson et al., Phys. Rev. E 66, 066608 (2002).
[2] M. Skorobogatiy et al., Opt. Express 21, 1227 (2002).
[3] M. L. Povinelli et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 84, 3639 (2004).
[4] S. G. Johnson et al., Phys. Rev. E. 65, 066611 (2002).
[5] S. G. Johnson et al., Appl. Phys. B, in press (summer 2005).

Snowbird, Utah     June 11 - 17, 2005