Analysis of periodic anisotropic media by means of split-field FDTD method and GPU computing

Abstract

The implementation of the Split-Field Finite Difference Time-Domain (SP-FDTD) method in Graphics Processing Units is described in this work. This formalism is applied to light wave propagation through periodic media with arbitrary anisotropy. The anisotropic media is modeled by means of a permittivity tensor with non-diagonal elements and absorbing boundary conditions are also considered. The split-field technique and the periodic boundary condition allow to consider a single period of the structure reducing the simulation grid. Nevertheless, the analysis of anisotropic media implies considering all the electromagnetic field components and the use of complex notation. These aspects reduce the computational efficiency of the numerical method compared to the isotropic and non-periodic implementation. With the upcoming of the new generation of General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Units many scientific applications have been accelerated and others are being developed into this new parallel digital computing architecture. Specifically, the implementation of the SP-FDTD in the Fermi family of GPUs of NVIDIA is presented. An analysis of the performance of this implementation is done and several applications have been considered in order to estimate the possibilities provided by both the formalism and the implementation into GPU. The formalism has been used for analyzing different structures and phenomena: binary phase gratings and twisted-nematic liquid crystal cells. The numerical predictions obtained by means of the FDTD method here implemented are compared with theoretical curves achieving good results, thus validating the accuracy and the potential of the implementation.