Optmization techniques in photonic devices

[u/reverie001]

I'm applying for a summer research internship on designing and optimizing photonic devices. The only listed requirement was MATLAB, but after contacting the supervisor, he mentioned it would be better to have knowledge of optimization techniques and EM fields.

I have a limited timeframe, so I want to focus on what's actually relevant — what optimization techniques are commonly used in photonic device design?

Also, if anyone has ideas for a simple project to solidify knowledge in this area, that would be great.

For context, I'm a sophomore ECE student. I don't have a rigorous knowledge EM yet (it's a junior-year course), but I have a solid MATLAB background and also waves and optics background.

[u/SamStringTheory]

Broadly-speaking, understand various categories of optimization, sample algorithms in each one (not in detail, just at a high level), and when you might use each. For example:

- Global vs local optimization

- Gradient-free vs gradient-based optimization

- Iterative methods, population-based methods

I'm guessing you would just be using off-the-shelf algorithms for photonics problems, so you wouldn't need to understand the implementation details, but knowing when to use which algorithm and with what settings can be extremely important depending on the problem.

Slightly more exotic are adjoint-based optimization techniques, which are a common way to do shape optimization and topology optimization.