Efficient 3D sensitivity analysis of surface plasmon waveguide structures.

We present a novel analytical approach for efficient sensitivity analysis of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) waveguide-based structures using the beam propagation method (BPM). Our approach exploits the adjoint variable technique to extract the response sensitivities with respect to all the design parameters regardless of their number. No extra BPM simulations are required. The accuracy of the results are comparable to those obtained using the expensive central finite difference approximations applied at the response level. Our approach is successfully applied to different SPPs structures for different applications.