Benchmarking of software tools for the characterization of nanoparticles

Although many commercially available electromagnetic tools are conveniently used in RF and microwave applications, only a few of them provide the capability to analyze the optical response of nanometric radiators and scatterers. The assessment of their performance in the visible to near ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum becomes more and more important, considering the exponential rise of nanoscale systems. Since the accuracy of these numerical tools has not been fully investigated in literature, in this paper we essentially demonstrate a comparative study of the most widely used EM field solvers in the area of nano-plasmonics: COMSOL, CST and Lumerical. This is done through the investigation of the near and far field characteristics of basic canonical nanoparticles such as spheres, shells, cubes and cuboids, varying their sizes and constituting materials. The benchmarking results clearly show that at this moment not all EM field solvers offer the same accuracy. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America