Electromagnetic calculations for multiscale and multiphysics simulations: a new perspective

Abstract

Present day electromagnetic field calculations have limitations that are due to techniques employing edge-based discretization methods. While these vector finite element methods solve the issues of tangential continuity of fields and the removal of spurious solutions, resulting fields do not have a unique directionality at nodes in the discretization mesh. This review presents electromagnetic field calculations in waveguides, cavity fields, and photonic crystals. We develop Hermite interpolation polynomials and node-based finite element methods based on variational principles. We show that the Hermite-finite element method (HFEM) delivers high accuracy and suitable for multiscale calculations with mixed physics. We use group representation theory to derive the HFEM polynomial basis set in two-dimensions. The energy level degeneracy in a cubic cavity can be denumerably large even though the symmetry of the cube. We show that the additional operators available for the problem lead to accidental degeneracy. We discuss this remarkable degeneracy and its reduction in detail. We consider photonic crystals corresponding to a 2D checkerboard superlattice structure, and the Escher drawing of the Horsemen which satisfies the nonsymmorphic group pg. We show that HFEM is able to deliver high accuracy in such spatially complex examples with far less computational effort than Fourier expansion methods. The algorithms developed here hold the promise of successful modeling of multi-physics systems. This general method is applicable to a broad class of physical systems, to semiconducting lasers which require simultaneous modeling of transitions in quantum wells or dots together with EM cavity calculations, to modeling plasmonic structures in the presence of EM field emissions, and to on-chip propagation within monolithic integrated circuits.