Section: New Results

Spectral theory and modal approaches for waveguides

Plasmonic waveguides

Participants : Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Ben Dhia, Patrick Ciarlet.

This work is done in collaboration with Camille Carvalho (UC Merced, California, USA) and Lucas Chesnel (EPI DEFI). A plasmonic waveguide is a cylindrical structure consisting of metal and dielectric parts. In a certain frequency range, the metal can be seen as a lossless material with a negative dielectric permittivity. The study of the modes of a plasmonic waveguide is then presented as a model eigenvalue problem with a sign-change of coefficients in the main part of the operator. Depending on the values of the contrast of permittivities at the metal/dielectric interface, different situations may occur. We focus on the situation where the interface between metal and dielectric presents corners. For a particular contrast range, the problem is neither self-adjoint nor with compact resolvent, this is the "critical" case. Whereas in the "nice" case, the problem is self-adjoint with compact resolvent and admits two sequences of eigenvalues tending to $-\infty$ and $+\infty$. In the "critical" case, Kondratiev's theory of singularities allows to build extensions of the operator, with compact resolvent. We show that the eigenvalues for one of these extensions can be computed by combining finite elements and Perfectly Matched Layers at the corners. The paradox is that a specific treatment has to be done to capture the corners singularities, even to compute regular eigenmodes. In the "nice" case, we propose and analyze numerical techniques based on the notion of T-coercive meshes that allow to solve the model problem.

Modal analysis of electromagnetic dispersive media

Participants : Christophe Hazard, Sandrine Paolantoni.

We investigate the spectral effects of an interface between a usual dielectric and a negative-index material (NIM), that is, a dispersive material whose electric permittivity and magnetic permeability become negative in some frequency range. We consider here an elementary situation, namely, 1) the simplest existing model of NIM : the Drude model (for which negativity occurs at low frequencies); 2) a two-dimensional scalar model derived from the complete Maxwell's equations; 3) the case of a simple bounded cavity: a camembert-like domain partially

lled with a portion of non dissipative Drude material. Because of the frequency dispersion (the permittivity and permeability depend on the frequency), the spectral analysis of such a cavity is unusual since it yields a nonlinear eigenvalue problem. Thanks to the use of an additional unknown, we show how to linearize the problem and we present a complete description of the spectrum.

Formulation of invisibility in waveguides as an eigenvalue problem

Participants : Antoine Bera, Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Ben Dhia.

This work is done in collaboration with Lucas Chesnel from EPI DEFI, Vincent Pagneux from Laboratoire d'Acoustique de l'Université du Maine and Sergei Nazarov from Russian Academy of Sciences. A scatterer placed in an infinite waveguide may be invisible at particular discrete frequencies. We consider two different definitions of invisibility: no reflection (but possible conversion or phase shift in transmission) or perfect invisibility (the scattered field is exponentially decaying at infinity). Our objective is to show that the invisibility frequencies can be characterized as eigenvalues of some spectral problems. Two different approaches will be used for the two different definitions of invisibility, leading to non-selfadjoint eigenvalue problems. Concerning the non-reflection case, our approach based on an original use of PMLs allows to extend to higher dimension and to complex eigenvalues the results obtained by Hernandez-Coronado, Krejcirik and Siegl on a 1D model problem.

Transparent boundary conditions for general waveguide problems

Participants : Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Ben Dhia, Sonia Fliss.

In this work, done in collaboration with Antoine Tonnoir from INSA of Rouen, we propose a construction of transparent boundary conditions which can be used for quite general waveguide problems. Classical Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps used for homogeneous acoustic waveguides can be constructed using separation of variables and the orthogonality of the modes on one transverse section. These properties are also important for the mathematical and numerical analysis of problems involving DtN maps. However this framework does not extend directly to strati

ed, anisotropic or periodic waveguides and for Maxwell's or elastic equations. The difficulties are that (1) the separation of variables is not always possible and (2) the modes of the waveguides are not necessarily orthogonal on the transverse section. We propose an alternative to the DtN maps which uses two artificial boundaries and is constructed using a more general orthogonality property.