Inverse Design of Nanoparticles for Enhanced Raman Scattering

Abstract

We show that topology optimization (TO) of metallic resonators can lead to $\sim 10^2\times$ improvement in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) efficiency compared to traditional resonant structures such as bowtie antennas. TO inverse design leads to surprising structures very different from conventional designs, which simultaneously optimize focusing of the incident wave and emission from the Raman dipole. We consider isolated metallic particles as well as more complicated configurations such as periodic surfaces or resonators coupled to dielectric waveguides, and the benefits of TO are even greater in the latter case. Our results are motivated by recent rigorous upper bounds to Raman scattering enhancement, and shed light on the extent to which these bounds are achievable.

arXiv comment19 pages

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• Trace formulation for photonic inverse design with incoherent sources
• Inverse-designed dielectric cloaks for entanglement generation
• Designing Structures that Maximize Spatially Averaged Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectra
• Inverse Design of Nonlinear Metasurfaces for Sum Frequency Generation
• Approaching the upper limits of the local density of states via optimized metallic cavities
• Efficient first-principles inverse design of nanolasers
• Eigenvalue-accelerated LDOS optimization of high-Q optical resonances
• Topology-optimized distributed 3d anisotropic Raman emission
• Metalens formed by structured arrays of atomic emitters
• Enhanced excitation and readout of plasmonic cavity modes in NPoM via SiN waveguides for on-chip SERS