Nanophotonics encompasses a wide range of nontrivial physical effects including light-matter interactions that are well beyond diffraction limits, and have opened up new avenues for a variety of applications in light harvesting, sensing, luminescence, optical switching, and media transmitting technologies. Recently, growing expertise of fusing nanotechnology and photonics has become fundamental, arising outskirts, challenging basic experimentation and opportunities for new technologies in our daily lives, and played a central role in many optical systems. It entails the theoretical study of photon’s interactions with matter at incredibly small scales, known as nanostructures, in order to prepare nanometer scale devices and accessories for processing, development, slowing down, influencing, and/or regulating photons through comprehending their behavior while interacting with or otherwise traveling via matter. This multidisciplinary field has also made an impact on industry, allowing researchers to explore new horizons in design, applied science, physical science, chemistry, materials science, and biomedical technologies. The foundations, nano-confinements, quantum manifestations, nanoscale interactions, numerical methods, and peculiarities of nonlinear optical phenomena in nano-photonics as well as projected nano-photonics consumption’s in our cutting-edge world, will be covered in this chapter.
Part of the book: Nonlinear Optics
Density Functional Theory (DFT) is a powerful and commonly employed quantum mechanical tool for investigating various aspects of matter. The research in this field ranges from the development of novel analytical approaches focused on the design of precise exchange-correlation functionals to the use of this technique to predict the molecular and electronic configuration of atoms, molecules, complexes, and solids in both gas and solution phases. The history to DFT’s success is the quest for the exchange-correlation functional, which utilizes density to represent advanced many-body phenomena inside one element formalism. If a precise exchange-correlation functional is applied, it may correctly describe the quantum nature of matter. The estimated character of the exchange-correlation functional is the basis for DFT implementation success or failure. Hohenberg-Kohn established that every characteristic of a system in ground state is a unique functional of its density, laying the foundation for DFT, which is being utilized to explore the novelty of materials. This chapter is aimed to present an overview of DFT by explaining the theoretical background, commonly used approximations as well as their recent developments and challenges faced along-with new horizons.
Part of the book: Density Functional Theory