Error-Controlled Boundary Element Modeling of 3D Plasmonic Nano-Structures

Traditional low order numerical method of computational electromagnetics produce notably higher error when applied to analysis of plasmonic nano-structures compared to the structures with conventional values of permittivity and permeability. The high error levels are typically observed at the junctions of the low-order elements on the surface of such structures. It is caused by the artificial geometrical discontinuities resulted from flat panelled approximation of the physically smooth surface. Increase of the low-order discretization density typically does not reduce such error effectively. In this work we describe higher-order boundary element modelling approach which eliminates such errors and provides error-controlled approximation of the fields in arbitrary smooth 3D structures down to machine precision if necessary. The approach is based on higher-order Locally Corrected Nystrom discretization of the traditional surface Electric Field and Magnetic Field integral equations formulated for multi-region penetrable objects.