Parallel Power Computation for Photonic Crystal Devices

Abstract

Three-dimensional finite-different time-domain (3D FDTD) simulation of photonic crystal devices often demands large amount of computational resources. In many cases it is unlikely to carry out the task on a serial computer. We have therefore parallelized a 3D FDTD code using MPI. Initially we used a one-dimensional topology so that the computational domain was divided into slices perpendicular to the direction of the power flow. Even though the speed-up of this implementation left considerable room for improvement, we were nevertheless able to solve largescale and long-running problems. Two such cases were studied: the power transmission in a two-dimensional photonic crystal waveguide in a multilayered structure, and the power coupling from a wire waveguide to a photonic crystal slab. In the first case, a power dip due to TE/TM modes conversion is observed and in the second case, the structure is optimized to improve the coupling. We have also recently completed a full three-dimensional topology parallelization of the FDTD code.