Irradiated materials that are weakly absorbing are heated by both diffusive and direct heating. This creates various internal heating patterns and introduces the possibility of developing hot spots in the specimen that are not detected by surface monitoring. These systems are investigated for a single instantaneous radiation pulse and for a chain of such pulses. Characteristic times are identif...

An Inverse Electromagnetic Design algorithm is presented that can efficiently solve for optimal shapes of electromagnetic devices, such as antennas, surface textures and gratings. The algorithm was implemented in software along with techniques to represent non-parametric or freeform shapes, which allow the optimization to explore non-intuitive solutions. This Inverse Design Software was then us...