Optimal Control of Light at The Nanoscale

Whether it be enhancing spontaneous emission from quantum defects or thermal radiation from hot objects, nanophotonic devices provide a means to control light all the way down to the nanometer scale. Here, we birefly review recent progress in our undesrstanding of fundamental limits to light manipulation through structural engineering. Focusing on several canonical photonic objectives---minimizing extinction from subwavelength emitters and enhancing heat exchange at the nanoscale, we show that recent convex optimization methods can be used to complement large-scale structural optimization techniques to provide a mechanism- and geometry-agnostic means of discovering nanophotonic laws.