Field of Expertise: Advanced Material Science

A SIMULATION PROCEDURE FOR LIGHT-MATTER INTERACTION AT DIFFERENT LENGTH SCALES
Claude Leiner
Joanneum Research Materials Weiz
16:20 - 17:00 Thursday 24 October 2013 AT02002J

The development of photonic devices with tailor-made optical properties requires the control and the manipulation of light propagation within structures of different length scales, ranging from sub-wavelength to macroscopic dimensions. However, optical simulation at different length scales necessitates the combination of different simulation methods, which have to account properly for various effects such as polar¬ization, interference, or diffraction: At dimensions much larger than the wavelength of light common ray-tracing (RT) techniques are conveniently employed, while in the sub-wavelength regime more sophisticated approaches, like the so-called finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique, are needed. Describing light propagation both in the sub-wavelength regime as well as at macroscopic length scales can only be achieved by bridging between these two approaches, which in our case is realized by the set-up of an interface for the two commercial simulation programs ASAP (Breault Research) and FDTD SOLUTIONS (Lumerical).
In general, such an interface already exists for these two program packages; however this commercially available interface is restricted to very small sample areas. Nevertheless, many real world optical devices use e.g. diffractive optical elements (DOEs) having comparably large areas in the order of 1-2 mm² (or larger). Therefore, one has to develop further strategies in order to handle the data transfer between ASAP and FDTD also for structures of such larger size scales. In this way support programs like e.g. MATLAB can be used to serve as an interface between both approaches. In this talk a detailed discussion on the interface procedure will be presented. With the help of such a sophisticated interface procedure also complex optical setups that contain refractive as well as diffractive optical elements like the example device shown in the picture can be handled and the individual components adjusted to one another.