Eur. Phys. J. E (2021) 44: 118
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/s10189-021-00124-8

Tips and Tricks

Rayleigh method adapted for the study of the optical response of natural photonic structures

¹ Grupo de Electromagnetismo Aplicado, Departamento de Física, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria Pabellón I, C1428EHA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
² Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina
³ Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria Pabellón 2, C1428EHA, Buenos Aires, Argentina
⁴ Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires, CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

^a msolvidal10@gmail.com

Received: 18 March 2021
Accepted: 7 September 2021
Published online: 23 September 2021

Abstract

To study the electromagnetic response of natural structures that exhibit interesting optical properties, we developed a computational tool to solve the problem of electromagnetic scattering by a rough interface between two isotropic media, based on the Rayleigh method. The key aspect of the developed formalism is its capability of introducing the interface profile within the code by means of a digitalized image of the structure, which can be either obtained from an electron microscopy image or simply by design according to the complexity of the scattering surface. As application examples, we show the results obtained for surfaces taken directly from microscopy images of two different biological species. This approach constitutes a fundamental step in order to model the electromagnetic response of natural photonic structures.