Map Optical Properties to Subwavelength Structures Directly via a Diffusion Model

Subwavelength photonic structures and metamaterials provide revolutionary approaches for controlling light. The inverse design methods proposed for these subwavelength structures are vital to the development of new photonic devices. However, most of the existing inverse design methods cannot realize direct mapping from optical properties to photonic structures but instead rely on forward simulation methods to perform iterative optimization. In this work, we exploit the powerful generative abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and propose a practical inverse design method based on latent diffusion models. Our method maps directly the optical properties to structures without the requirement of forward simulation and iterative optimization. Here, the given optical properties can work as "prompts" and guide the constructed model to correctly "draw" the required photonic structures. Experiments show that our direct mapping-based inverse design method can generate subwavelength photonic structures at high fidelity while following the given optical properties. This may change the method used for optical design and greatly accelerate the research on new photonic devices.