Mirzaei, AliZharova, Nina A.Shadrivov, Ilya V.Miroshnichenko, Andrey2016-06-062016-06-060740-3224http://hdl.handle.net/1885/102002We study light scattering by cylindrical multilayer structures containing Kerr-type nonlinear materials. We develop a new semi-analytical method for solving such nonlinear problems by reducing the original 2D system by a 1D nonlinear Helmholtz equation. We apply our method for the case of wave scattering by the core-shell metal-dielectric nanowire and show that the nonlinearity allows us to control scattering cross section, which in the resonant regime demonstrates optical bistability. We compare our method with the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) approach and find that the new approach is accurate and is 105 times faster and more numerically robust than the FDTD.A. E. M. and I. V. S. would like to acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council through the Future Fellowship (FT110100037) and Discovery Projects. NAZ acknowledges support from the Russian Fund for Basic Research through grant no. 13-02-97115.© 2014 Optical Society of America201410.1364/JOSAB.31.001595