Dear Meep-people, One of the great attractions of meep is the development of the tools that permit numerical study of radiating point-dipoles in or near objects that modify the local density of states. The LDOS discussion in Chapter 4 of “the book” is one of the most lucid I have read in the scientific or engineering literature. Of active interest in light-matter interaction at the nanoscale is the modification of atomic spontaneous emission rates near the surfaces of so-called hyperbolic metamaterials. In their simplest form these metamaterials consist of alternating subwavelength-thick stacks of dielectric and metal…GaP/Ag, for example. It appears from the discussion in Chapter 4 that the LDOS expression is restricted to materials with real, isotropic permittivity. I think there would be great interest in further developing these meep tools to include anisotropic materials implemented using real (lossy) metals and extend the discussion to complex permittivities. Seems to me that this might not be too difficult to implement since the tutorial case, the metal box with the notch, introduces loss via the evanescent modes of the subwavelength aperture. Real metals at the dielectric metal interfaces introduce loss via surface plasmon evanescent waves. Has anybody thought about pushing meep development in this direction?
John Weiner _______________________________________________ meep-discuss mailing list meep-discuss@ab-initio.mit.edu http://ab-initio.mit.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/meep-discuss
