Normal vector approach to Fourier modal scattering from planar periodic photonic structures

Abstract

Fourier modal expansion techniques are very well suited for electromagnetic (EM) scattering in planar periodic stratified media. These techniques expand the transverse EM fields in Bloch modes in each strata unit-cell, but do not rigorously enforce EM boundary conditions at interior material interfaces which gives rise to slow convergence of the polarized S-matrix values with increasing Fourier series truncation order. We present a normal vector (NV) Fourier modal scattering approach that uses the gradient of the real permittivity in the unit-cell to generate a local NV resulting in anisotropic eigenmodes of Maxwell's equations that satisfy interior boundary conditions. The convergence of this expansion method is examine numerically for our analytic NV derived from planar primitive geometry elements for various example structures. The Fourier modal NV method is then derived for the planar cavity boundary value problem and the cavity eigenmodes and density of states is determined from the analytic continuation of the secular determinant. A complete scattering method for highly dispersive materials and sub-wavelength structures has been presented that is adaptable to planar EM cavity problems using fluctuation electrodynamics formalism.