Efficient spectrally accurate global basis methods for high frequency wave scattering, chaotic eigenmodes, and photonics

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

Accurate and rapid numerical solution of the Helmholtz and related partial differential equations in complex geometries is key to future progress in device design, in imaging, and in basic science. However, at high frequencies (many wavelengths across the system) this becomes prohibitively challenging using direct discretization, due to the multiscale nature of the problem. The investigator seeks to build upon boundary-based methods which have been uniquely successful (up to a thousand times faster than the competition) in solving eigenmode problems hundreds of wavelength in size with spectral accuracy in two dimensions, and to extend them to the scattering problem, to more general media and periodic boundary conditions, and to three dimensions. These methods are global approximation by particular solution basis sets, and the scaling method for Dirichlet eigenmodes. Proposed extensions include: 1) use of fundamental solutions basis sets, and their analysis via the role of singularities in the analytic continuation of the wave field, 2) exploiting a little-known analytic formula for the fundamental solution in linear graded-index materials, enabling non-piecewise-constant media to be solved on the boundary, 3) error analysis of a reformulation of the scaling method via the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map for the domain, 4) application of such methods to the spectrally accurate solution of dielectric photonic crystal band structure, and to `quantum chaos' (the wave and spectral properties of cavities with ergodic ray dynamics). The impact of our technology such as radar, microwave communication (eg cellphones), optics and lasers, acoustics, medical ultrasound imaging, and miniaturized quantum devices has been, and will continue to be, profound and far-reaching. To design all such devices, one must calculate how they will reflect, guide and trap waves, and this is a time-intensive, difficult and sometimes unreliable computation. The computer algorithms proposed by the investigator will make such calculations faster and more accurate, particularly when the objects are large or complicated in shape. This is expected to lead to improvements in the design of, for example, optical signal-processing devices (which rely on microscopic periodic structures the size of the wavelength of light), promising candidates for the next generation of fast (post-silicon) computers. A deeper grasp of quantum chaos (the behavior of waves trapped in cavities which cause chaotic bouncing of rays) would impact nanoscale quantum wave devices such as quantum dots, super-fast quantum computers, as well as areas of pure mathematics and physics theory. The proposal also provides training in applied and computational mathematics at both graduate and undergraduate levels, and a course on the ``Mathematics of Music and Sound'' introducing non-majors to waves, modes, and resonance.