ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the parallel Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method incorporated with a four-level atomic system. It presents the detailed three-dimensional (3D) FDTD algorithm for vacuum, dispersive Drude metal, gain material, and perfectly matched layer. The FDTD computational domain is split into many blocks and each is assigned to one central processing unit (CPU). Each CPU runs parallel to the same update algorithms inside the block and communicates every time step with its neighboring CPUs to send and receive fields data in the block edges. In numerical simulations, lots of geometries of interest are defined in “open” regions where the spatial domain of the computed field is unbounded in one or more dimensions. The FDTD method is very demanding in terms of memory and speed of the available computer hardware when applied to practical 3D problems such as analysis of transmission spectra of photonic crystals waveguide in layered structures with two-dimensional patterning.
