Efficient post-processing of electromagnetic plane wave simulations to model arbitrary structured beams incident on axisymmetric structures

Abstract

The study of an optical beam interacting with material structures is a fundamental of nanophotonics. Computational electromagnetic solvers facilitate the rapid calculation of the scattering from material structures with arbitrary geometry and complexity, but have limited efficiency when employing structured excitation fields. We have developed a post-processing method and package that can efficiently calculate the full three-dimensional electric and magnetic fields for any optical beam incident on a particle or structure with at least one axis of continuous rotational symmetry, called an axisymmetric body (such as a sphere, cylinder, cone, torus or surface). Provided an initial batch of plane wave simulations is computed, this open-source package combines data from computational electromagnetic solvers in a post-processing fashion using the angular spectrum representation to create arbitrarily structured beams, including vector vortex beams. Any and all possible incident beams can be generated from the initial batch of PWSs, without the need for further simulations. This allows for efficiently performing parameter sweeps such as changing the angle of illumination or translating the particle position relative to the beam, all in post-processing, with no need for additional time-consuming simulations. We demonstrate some applications by numerically calculating optical force and torque maps for a spherical plasmonic nanoparticle in a tightly focused Gaussian beam, a plasmonic nanocone in an azimuthally polarised beam and compute the fields of a non-paraxial Laguerre–Gaussian vortex beam reflecting on a multilayered surface. We believe this package, called BEAMS, is a valuable tool for rapidly quantifying electromagnetic systems that are beyond traditional analytical methods.