Perturbation theory for anisotropic dielectric interfaces, and application to subpixel smoothing of discretized numerical methods

Abstract

We derive a correct first-order perturbation theory in electromagnetism for cases where an interface between two anisotropic dielectric materials is slightly shifted. Most previous perturbative methods give incorrect results for this case, even to lowest order, because of the complicated discontinuous boundary conditions on the electric field at such an interface. Our final expression is simply a surface integral, over the material interface, of the continuous field components from the unperturbed structure. The derivation is based on a "localized" coordinate-transformation technique, which avoids both the problem of field discontinuities and the challenge of constructing an explicit coordinate transformation by taking the limit in which the coordinate perturbation is infinitesimally localized around the boundary. Not only is our result potentially useful in evaluating boundary perturbations, e.g., from fabrication imperfections, in highly anisotropic media such as many metamaterials, but it also has a direct application in numerical electromagnetism. In particular, we show how it leads to a subpixel smoothing scheme to ameliorate staircasing effects in discretized simulations of anisotropic media, in such a way as to greatly reduce the numerical errors compared to other proposed smoothing schemes.