Theoretical studies of light propagation in photonic and plasmonic devices

Abstract: Photonics nowadays is one of the most rapidly developing areas of modern physics. Photonic chips are considered to be promising candidates for a new generation of high-performance systems for informational technology, as the photonic devices provide much higher information capacity in comparison to conventional electronics. They also offer the possibility of integration with electronic components to provide increased functionality. Photonics has also found numerous applications in various fields including signal processing, computing, sensing, printing, and others.Photonics, which traditionally covers lasing cavities, waveguides, and photonic crystals, is now expanding to new research directions such as plasmonics and nanophotonics. Plasmonic structures, namely nanoparticles, metallic and dielectric waveguides and gratings, possess unprecedented potential to guide and manipulate light at nanoscale.This Thesis presents the results of theoretical studies of light propagation in photonic and plasmonic structures, namely lasing disk microcavities, photonic crystals, metallic gratings and nanoparticle arrays. A special emphasis has been made on development of high-performance techniques for studies of photonic devices.The following papers are included:In the first two papers (Paper I and Paper II) we developed a novel scattering matrix technique for calculation of resonant states in 2D disk microcavities with the imperfect surface or/and inhomogeneous refraction index. The results demonstrate that the surface imperfections represent the crucial factor determining the $Q$ factor of the cavity.A generalization of the scattering-matrix technique to the quantum-mecha\-nical electron scattering has been made in Paper III. This has allowed us to treat a realistic potential of quantum-corrals (which can be considered as nanoscale analogues of optical cavities) and has provided a new insight and interpretation of the experimental observations.Papers IV and V present a novel effective Green's function technique for studying light propagation in photonic crystals. Using this technique we have analyzed surface modes and proposed several novel surface-state-based devices for lasing/sensing, waveguiding and light feeding applications.In Paper VI the propagation of light in nanorod arrays has been studied. We have demonstrated that the simple Maxwell Garnett effective-medium theory cannot properly describe the coupling and clustering effects of nanorods. We have demonstrated the possibility of using nanorod arrays as high-quality polarizers.In Paper VII we modeled the plasmon-enhanced absorption in polymeric solar cells. In order to excite a plasmon we utilized a grated aluminum substrate. The increased absorption has been verified experimentally and good agreement with our theoretical data has been achieved.