Optical response of cylindrical multilayers in the context of hydrodynamic convection-diffusion model

Abstract

In this work, we generalize the cascading scattering matrix algorithm for calculating the optical response of concentric multilayered structures comprised of either plasmonic metal or dielectric, within the framework of hydrodynamic convection-diffusion model of electrodynamics. Two additional boundary conditions, namely, the continuity of first order pressure of free electron density and the continuity of normal components of free charge velocity, respectively, are adopted in order to handle the behaviour at interfaces involving metals. Scattering matrices at interfaces can be readily obtained and cascaded to obtain the modal coefficients in each layer by expanding electromagnetic waves in harmonic modes with cylindrical vector wave functions. We have validated the proposed method by analyzing the optical responses of several configurations of nanostructures, including a bi-metallic nanocylinder and a hyperlens. We found that nonlocal effects can be important for small structures, when the characteristic size is comparable to the Fermi wavelength. The proposed method shows its capability and flexibility to solve hybrid metal-dielectric multilayer structures even when the number of layers is large. Although we have discussed our method in the context of the retarded radiation regime, it can be applied in quasi-static scenarios without any difficulties. Furthermore, it may be extended to solve similar problems in other areas of physics, such as acoustics.