ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the solution of Maxwell’s equations using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method for photonics and nanophotonics. FDTD is a very rigorous technique and can solve a huge number of optical structures. FDTD provide an accurate technique for modeling nanophotonic devices. It has also been exploited in understanding various novel effects that have been recently developed in the area of nano-optics and photonics. The ability to model the surface plasmon wave of nanostructures and metamaterials is considered one of the main advantages of using FDTD in nanophotonics due to the limited availability of other accurate techniques. For such structures, the electric size is on the order of one to few multiples of the wavelength, which makes the computational resources for modeling these nanostructures using FDTD affordable using the recent advancement in technology. FDTD has been utilized to understand and analyze the characteristics of the plasmonic waveguides.
