Developing Efficient Numerical Solvers for Optical Microcavities

Optical microcavities of high quality factor and small mode volume are important in various fields of optics, because they allow us to localize light and to enhance light-matter interactions. Numerical simulations are essential in the design and optimization of microcavities for practical applications. Existing numerical methods for simulating three-dimensional microcavities typically require long computation time and large computer memory. In this project, the researchers propose some numerical methods for various optical microcavities. The approaches are based on rigorous boundary conditions to reduce the domain of computation, prior analysis of unit cells to avoid duplicated calculations, and dimension reduction for easier search of eigenvalues.