MENP: an open-source MATLAB implementation of multipole expansion for nanophotonics

Abstract

In modern nanophotonics, multipolar interference plays an indispensable role to realize novel optical devices represented by metasurfaces with unprecedented functionalities. Not only to engineer sub-wavelength structures that constitute such devices but also to realize and interpret unnatural phenomena in nanophotonics, a program that efficiently carries out multipole expansion is highly demanded. MENP is a MATLAB program for computation of multipole contributions to light scattering from current density distributions induced in nanophotonic resonators. The main purpose of MENP is to carry out post-processing of a rigid multipole expansion for full-field simulations that in principle provide the information of all near- and far-field interactions (e.g., as a total scattering cross section). MENP decomposes total scattering cross sections into partial ones due to electric and magnetic dipolar and quadrupolar terms based on recently developed exact multipole expansion formulas. We validate the program by comparing results for ideal and realistic nanospheres with those obtained with the Mie theory. We also demonstrate the potential of MENP for analysis of anapole states by calculating the multipole expansion under the long-wavelength approximation, which enables us to introduce toroidal dipole moments.