Trade-offs in absorption and scattering by nanophotonic structures

Trade-offs between feasible absorption and scattering cross sections of obstacles confined to an arbitrarily shaped volume are formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem solvable by Lagrangian-dual methods. Solutions to this optimization problem yield a Pareto-optimal set, the shape of which reveals the feasibility of achieving simultaneously extremal absorption and scattering. Two forms of the trade-off problems are considered involving both loss and reactive material parameters. Numerical comparisons between the derived multi-objective bounds and several classes of realized structures are made. Additionally, low-frequency (electrically small, long wavelength) limits are examined for certain special cases.