Computational modelling of interaction of light with clusters of nanoparticles is a notoriously challenging problem, chiefly because of the vectorial nature of the electromagnetic field, the existence of multiple scales at which the field must be described, such as in the near-, intermediate-, and far-field regions, the large parameter space needed to describe the nanoparticles in the cluster, and the complex, multi-scattering processes undergone by optical waves propagating within the nanoparticle cluster.
This computational complexity is further enhanced if nonlinear optical processes are considered.
In this talk, I will briefly introduce the numerical method used to model computationally such complex interactions, the so-called multiple-scattering matrix (MSM) method, and an HPC code (OPTIMET), which has been developed with eCSE support and implements the MSM method.
In particular, I will present the main structure of the code, describe the main steps of a numerical simulation, and discuss its scaling properties with respect to the number of nanoparticles in the cluster and number of cores as established on ARCHER2.
Several examples of numerical simulations of the linear and nonlinear optical response of certain nanoparticle clusters will be presented, too.
This online session is open to all. It will use the Blackboard Collaborate platform.