Improving accuracy by sub-pixel smoothing in FDTD

A. Farjadpour; D. Roundy; A. Rodriguez; M. Ibanescu; P. Bermel; J. D. Joannopoulos; S. G. Johnson; G. W. Burr

doi:10.1117/12.706155

30 August 2006 Improving accuracy by sub-pixel smoothing in FDTD

A. Farjadpour, D. Roundy, A. Rodriguez, M. Ibanescu, P. Bermel, J. D. Joannopoulos, S. G. Johnson, G. W. Burr

Proceedings Volume 6322, Tuning the Optic Response of Photonic Bandgap Structures III; 63220G (2006) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.706155
Event: SPIE Optics + Photonics, 2006, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) methods suffer from reduced accuracy when modeling discontinuous dielectric materials, due to the inhererent discretization ("pixellization"). We show that accuracy can be significantly improved by using a sub-pixel smoothing of the dielectric function, but only if the smoothing scheme is properly designed. We develop such a scheme based on a simple criterion taken from perturbation theory, and compare it to other published FDTD smoothing methods. In addition to consistently achieving the smallest errors, our scheme is the only one that attains quadratic convergence with resolution for arbitrarily sloped interfaces. Finally, we discuss additional difficulties that arise for sharp dielectric corners.

Citation Download Citation

A. Farjadpour, D. Roundy, A. Rodriguez, M. Ibanescu, P. Bermel, J. D. Joannopoulos, S. G. Johnson, and G. W. Burr "Improving accuracy by sub-pixel smoothing in FDTD", Proc. SPIE 6322, Tuning the Optic Response of Photonic Bandgap Structures III, 63220G (30 August 2006); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.706155

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