We study the refractive index sensitive transmission of a 3D
plasmonic crystal, which can exhibit strong optical responses near certain wavelengths and are used in chemical sensing applications. Our goal is to design a a square array of subwavelength cylindrical nanowells in a polymer conformally coated with a gold film that maximizes the optical response.

Every choice of design parameters requires the solution of a 3D finite-difference time-domain simulations that runs for 12 hours of wall-clock time on a 125-nopde linux cluster. We reveal "How the Optimization Was Won" using low-tech tools such as email, matlab, and AMPL.

Government health warning:
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This talk is content-free! It does not contain any enlightening or educational material. Attending this talk may seriously harm your ability to carry out world-class research!

Joint work with Stephen Gray (CNM), Joanna Maria (UIUC), and
Boyana Norris (MCS).