Ab initio design of coherent thermal sources

Emission of thermal light from a hot body has been considered for a long time as broadband and quasi-isotropic. Today, we know that this paradigm is wrong and it has been shown that many micro- and nanostructured materials are able to radiate in narrow spectral bands and around specific directions of space. However, so far, only heuristic strategies based on trial and error have been followed for engineering such sources. Here, we present a general method for the ab initio design of coherent thermal sources by using only the first principles of optics. Our results pave the way toward the inverse design of new composite emitting structures for high performance applications in optics. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.