Artificial intelligence reveals how light flows around nanoparticles – Physics World

Artificial intelligence has been used to quickly and accurately model the 3D flow of light around arbitrarily shaped nanoparticles. Peter Wiecha and Otto Muskens at the University of Southampton in the UK demonstrated the modelling approach using a neural network that required just a single training procedure. Their technique could be used to design a wide range of optical devices that control the paths taken by light. When light interacts with nanostructures that are smaller in size than the wavelength of the light, the result can be very different from how light interacts with larger structures and continuous media. The field of nanophotonics seeks to exploit this by designing nanoparticles with particular shapes and compositions with the aim of manipulating light in specific ways.