The unprecedented ability of nano metallic (that is plasmonic) structures to concentrate light into deep-subwavelength volumes has propelled their use in a vast array of nanophotonic technologies and research endeavors. The field of plasmonics has grown dramatically over the past decade and still continues growing towards new directions that are continuously emerging. With the ability to produce highly confined optical fields, the conventional rules for light-matter interactions need to be re-examined,and researchers are venturing into new formulations. We are presenting a project, with the primary objective of extending the scope of applications of exact integral-equation (IE) method of moments (MoM) formulations to the electromagnetic analysis of plasmonic nanostructures and artificial materials(metamaterials) in visible and near-infrared frequency bands.

This new project can be seen as the natural continuation of the previous one in which the most efficient algorithms have been successfully combined with smart parallelizing strategies, resulting in highly efficient and scalable EM codes, having achieved the World Record in computational electromagnetics for several times. Now we confront a new challenge: to extend the use of exact MoM solutions to nanoscience and nanotechnology fields. So we must reformulate the integral equations in order to model plasmonic effects associated with resonant collective oscillations which appear in metals at optical frequencies. This basic objective will enable later application objectives, namely to go deep into the accurate design of optical nanoscale antennas and artificial materials and their applications. Optical antennas will allow the nanoscale control of the direction of photon emission, which will enhance many sensing and detection applications in the optical domain, such as nano-optical microscopy, spectroscopy and light emitting devices, including single-photon sources. Regarding the artificial materials, by removing conventional constraints on realizable properties, attainable in naturally occurring materials, the metamaterial concept enables the possibility of creating artificial media with unusual electromagnetic/optical properties, such as negative index of refraction, plasmonic behavior, etc.; which enables a wide range of applications in the fields of electromagnetic and optical technologies. We know that the objectives proposed in this project are in the leading edge frontier of science, but the experience in previous projects together with our solid background in electromagnetism constitute the best guarantees for the successful overcoming of the tasks involved in this new challenge, mainly taking into account that they are firmly grounded in classical electrodynamics.