Multiple multipole method with automatic multipole setting applied to the simulation of surface plasmons in metallic nanostructures

Highly accurate computations of surface plasmons in metallic nanostructures with various geometries are presented. Calculations for cylinders with irregular cross section, coupled structures, and periodic gratings are shown. These systems exhibit a resonant behavior with complex field distribution and strong field enhancement, and therefore their computation requires a very accurate numerical method. It is shown that the multiple multipole (MMP) method, together with an automatic multipole setting (AMS) procedure, is well suited for these computations. An AIMS technique for the two-dimensional MMP method is presented. It relies on the global topology of each domain boundary to generate a distribution of numerically independent multipole expansions. This technique greatly facilitates the MMP modeling. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.