T E K N O S I M 2007

Yogyakarta, 6 September 2007

DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF GAUSSIAN BEAM PROPAGATION

INSIDE A PHOTONIC CRYSTAL BASED REFRACTIVE INDEX SENSOR
BY MEANS OF FDTD METHOD

Musa Alaydrus1,#, Hermawan K. Dipojono1, Husin Alatas2

1)
Computational Materials Design Laboratory, Research Group of Engineering Physics,
Institute of Technology Bandung,
Jl. Ganesa 10, Bandung 40132, Jawa Barat, Indonesia
2)
Theoretical Physics Division, Department of Physics,
Bogor Agricultural University,
Jl. Meranti, Kampus IPB Darmaga, Bogor 16680, Jawa Barat, Indonesia
#)
E-mail: khalmusa@students.tf.itb.ac.id

Abstract

We study the propagation of beam inside a one dimensional photonic crystal that
functioned as an adjustable refractive index sensor device. The system consists of two
defect cells sandwiched between three regular Bragg grating segments. One of these two
defect cells plays as a regulator that adjust the sensitivity and operational frequency of the
device, while the other one as a receptor. It was shown in the previous study by Alatas et.
al. [Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 45 8B 6754 (2006)] for a plane wave light source that the system
admits the existence of resonance states inside its photonic band gap. As an extension, in
this study we use the light source distribution in the form of Gaussian beam and simulate its
dynamical propagation by directly integrates the associated Maxwell equations using the
finite difference time domain method. We demonstrate the creation of the related resonance
states on each defect cells.

Keywords: Photonic Crystal, Photonic Band Gap, Gaussian Beam, FDTD Method
1. Introduction
Photonic crystals (PC) are periodically structured dielectric media that generally possesing photonic band
gap (PBG) in which for certain range of frequency light cannot be propagated through them. This periodic
system is the electromagnetic analogue of a crystalline atomic lattice, where the latter acts on the electron wave
function to produce the energy band gap of semiconductors [1]. It is well known that for certain frequency that
lies within the PBG, the insertion of defect layers in photonic crystals configuration generate the photonic pass-
band (PPB) inside it and create localize electromagnetic field due to resonance mechanism. This feature can be
explained because these layers act as cavities. It is further demonstrated that the existence of PPB can be used to
develop a sensor device due the sensitivity of its position and peak transmittance with respect to the physical
variation of defect layer. Recently, a novel adjustable refractive index sensor based on PC with two defect layers
has been proposed in ref. [2]. In that report, the field distribution has been calculated for the continous plane
wave source cases by means of transfer matrix method. In this paper, we discuss the same system but with
different light source i.e. in the form of continous wave with transverse Gaussian distribution profile and
simulate the dynamical propagation of this beam by using the well establish finite difference time domain
(FDTD) method with the perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary condition.
2. Finite Grating System
In the following discussion we use the previous layer configuration given in ref. [2] for quasi-periodic
system of double layer unit cells of n0 n2 n1  D1 n2 n1 N D2 n2 n1 L n0 where D1 and D2 are defect cells as
M

depicted in Fig.1. Each of the regular grating segments consists of generally different integer numbers
M , N , L  of the same repeated double-layer unit structure n2 d 2 n1d1  with periodicity   d1  d 2 . The
defect cells are labeled by n2 d 2 n1d1  for the first defect D1 and n2d 2 n1d1  for the second defect D2 . The
material parameters are are given by n1  1.45 (SiO2), n 2  2.21 (TiO2), the operating wavelength around
 ~ 0.8 m , and n 0  1 (air) as the background medium. The geometrical parameters d 1  0.1379 m and
d 2  0.0905 m , which are chosen to satisfy the quarter-wave stack condition n1 d 1  n 2 d 2   0 4 for the

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 T E K N O S I M 2007
M. Alaydrus, H. K. Dipojono, H. Alatas

 
regular grating segments with  0  0.8 m  0  2.36  1015 s 1 . For the defect layer, we choose, for D1 ,
d 2   0 4 and n 2  n 2  2.21 while for d 2  3 0 4 and n 2  1.45.

2
Ez
x

y x
Fig. 1. (a) Sketch of finite one dimensional PC with two defect cells, (b) the Gaussian beam profile.

3. FDTD Formulation
Different from previous work [2], here we show the dynamical interaction of propagating waves (e.g.
Gaussian beam) inside a one-dimensional PC with two defects using FDTD method based illuminated by two-
dimensional transverse magnetic (TM) mode of Maxwell’s equations. The FDTD method has been widely
accepted as reliable computational tool in numerical electromagnetic. The explicit nature of the time-stepping
algorithm to solve Maxwells’ equations conveniently enables the visualization of the electromagnetic fields
inside the medium under investigation.
The FDTD method, as first proposed by Yee in 1966, is a simple and elegant way to discretize the
differential form of Maxwell’s equations [3]. Yee used an electric-field (E) grid offset both spatially and
temporally from a magnetic field (H) grid to obtain update equations that yield the present fields throughout the
computational domain in terms of the past fields. The interleaving both in space and time between electric and
magnetic fields as shown in Fig. 2. Yee have used central difference for spatial derivatives and the leapfrog
scheme for the time derivatives. As the boundary, we introduce the PML medium that surrounding the
computational domain [4]. In principle, this PML medium absorbs the incoming field such that no reflection
occur at the boundary.

(a) (b)

Fig. 2. (a) Position of the electric and magnetic field vector components of two-dimensional TM mode of the Yee space
lattice (b) Space-time chart of Yee algorithm for a one-dimensional wave propagation using leapfrog scheme for the
time derivatives and central difference for spatial derivatives.
Set up Initial conditions

Implementations of periodic structures and

Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) as
Absorbing boundary condition (ABC)
Fig. 3. Flow chart of the FDTD
algorithm structure.
Calculation over spatial grid in the
computational domain
Update H field
Update E field

Visualization

In this work, we solve the Maxwell’s equations for TM mode as given as follows:

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M. Alaydrus, H. K. Dipojono, H. Alatas

E z H y H x
0  E z   (1a)
t x y
H x E
0   H x   z (1b)
t y
H y E
  H y  z
0 (1c)
t x
where E and H are the TM mode electric and magnetic fields respectively, while  0 ,  r denote the vacuum
and relative electric susceptibility respectively, and 0 represents the vacuum magnetic susceptibility. The
conductivity   0 in the PML medium, whereas   0 in the computational domain. The flow graph in Fig. 3
shows the structure of the related FDTD algorithm. The first step for the FDTD simulation is to set the initial
condition of electric and magnetic fields and also the PML parameters. To simplify in writing the code, we have
used the unsplit PML in our FDTD scheme [5]. By this, we do not need to vary the electric and magnetic
conductivities along x and y directions. Further, to implement the periodic structures in FDTD algorithm we
assume that the propagating beam is at normal incident. Therefore, the spatial tilt, time delay or advance are not
required in the periodic boundary condition. In the direction of propagation, the PML medium is defined outside
background medium with n 0 refractive index.

(a) (b)

2
2 Ez
Ez

D1 D2 D1 D2
y y

(c) (d)

2 2
Ez Ez

D1 D2
D1 D2
y y
(e)

2
Ez

D1 D2
y

Fig. 4. Simulation results for  located in PPB at (a) t  60 time-step, (b) t  140 time-step, (c) t  210 time-step, (d)
t  280 time-step, and (e) t  320 time-step. Here, the PC system start at y  10 and end at y  86.

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4. Numerical Results and Discussion

For the number of grating segments we choose M , N . L   4, 5, 1. The cell size is chosen to be 45
nm, and the time-step is 75 fs. To compare the characteristics of the waves inside media we use the frequency
that located in PPB as well as in PBG. We have examined by the transfer matrix method that for a plane wave
source the PBG exist in the range of ~ 0.9 ω0 to 1.1 ω0 while the corresponding PPB is of 0.964ω0 to 0.967 ω0

[2]. From the projection on y, E z
2
plane given in Fig. 4, where the frequency is chosen to be at PPB region
namely at  ~ 0.9654 0 (cf. ref. [1]), we can see that the resonance state occur at the second defect D2 . It
should be noted that the PML boundary condition is not a good choice, since relatively large reflection still occur
at the interface between the computational domain and the PML medium. According to ref. [6], this happen
because the PML is not working properly for periodic system and further improvement is needed to overcome
this problem. At the same time, we can not find any suitable correlation based on ref. [4] between conductivity
and cell size when we use to calculate the PML conductivities if the cell size is in nano or micro-meter order of
magnitude. However, the results found in this report are still valid since we have avoided the aforementioned
problems by implementing a thicker PML layer and setting up the computational windows as large as possible
compare to the beam width, so that the scattered fields are relatively low when they reach the PML boundary and
insignificantly back propagated to the computational domain. To this end, because of this boundary problem, one
should realize that the process considered still not reaches the steady state condition since the observation time is
relatively short. We expect at the steady state condition the resonance states will occur in both D1 and D 2
defect cells as demonstrated in ref. [2].
As a comparison, in Fig. 5, we show the simulation results when the frequency is located in PBG i.e.
   0 . As expected, there is almost no propagating waves can be transmitted, indicating that the wave is
almost totally reflected.

(a) (b)

2 2
Ez Ez

D1 D2 D1 D2
y y

(c)

2
Ez

D1 D2
y

Fig. 5. Simulation results for  located in PBG at (a) t  50 time-step (b) t  150 time-step and (c) t  250 time-step.
The PC system start at y  10 and end at y  86.

5. Conclusions
We report the dynamics of Gaussian beam propagation inside a one-dimensional PC by using the FDTD
method. The PML boundary is not work effectively when we deal with smaller order of cell size’s dimension (up
to micro-nanometers). To solve this problem we enlarge the computational domain and use relatively thick PML
layer, which can reduce the reflection. The simulation shows that for the frequency inside PPB the creation of
resonance state occur, while the decaying field is observed for the case of frequency that located inside the PBG.

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References
1. S.G. Johnson, J.D. Joannopoulos, Introduction to Photonic Crystals: Bloch’s Theorem, Band Diagrams, and
Gaps, MIT (2003)
2. H. Alatas, H. Mayditia, H. Hardhienata, A. A. Iskandar, M. O. Tjia, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 45 8B, 6754 (2006)
3. A. Taflove, S. C. Hagness, Computational Electrodynamics-The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method,
Artech House, Boston (2000)
4. J. P. Berenger, IEEE trans. on antennas and prop., vol 44, no 1, 110 (1996)
5. D. M. Sullivan, Electromagnetic Simulation Using the FDTD Method, IEEE Press, Piscataway (2000)
6. R. Stoffer, Uni- and Omni-directional Simulation Tools for Integrated Optics, Ph.D Dissertation, Univ.
Twente (2001)

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