Regular papers

Numerical analysis of a slit-groove diffraction problem

¹ Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l’Institut d’Optique, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Campus Polytechnique, RD 128, 91127 Palaiseau, France
² Optics Research Group, Department of Imaging Science and Technology, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628CJ, Delft, The Netherlands
³ Philips Research Laboratory, Professor Holtslaan 4, 5656AA Eindhoven, The Netherlands
⁴ The Blackett Laboratory, Department of Physics, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BW, United Kingdom
⁵ Ghent University, Dept. of Information Technology, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, B-9000 Gent, Belgium
⁶ Lasmea, UMR 6602, 24 Avenue des Landais, 63177 Aubière, France
⁷ FernUniversitaet in Hagen, 58084 Hagen, Germany
⁸ Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-3113, USA
⁹ Institut FEMTO-ST, Département d’Optique P.M. Duffieux, 16 route de Gray, 25030 Besançon, France

^* philippe.lalanne@institutoptique.fr

Received: 18 May 2007

Abstract

We present a comparison among several fully-vectorial methods applied to a basic scattering problem governed by the physics of the electromagnetic interaction between subwavelength apertures in a metal film. The modelled structure represents a slit-groove scattering problem in a silver film deposited on a glass substrate. The benchmarked methods, all of which use in-house developed software, include a broad range of fully-vectorial approaches from finite-element methods, volume-integral methods, and finite-difference time domain methods, to various types of modal methods based on different expansion techniques.