Highly accurate field-magnitude extraction of monochromatic light waves under FDTD simulations

Abstract

The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is a popular and powerful numerical tool for simulating electromagnetic and optical problems by directly solving Maxwell’s equations. In this paper, two numerical techniques based on the discrete framework of FDTD method are proposed to accurately extract the field magnitudes of monochromatic light waves. They are designed based on the two identities of the absolute value and squared value integrals of the sinusoidal waveforms and are numerically evaluated by the composite trapezoidal rule without the requirement of additional computer memory. Three numerical examples under FDTD simulations are conducted to verify the accuracy and robustness of the two techniques. The proposed methodology is also applicable to other time-domain numerical methods for the field-magnitude extraction of light waves.