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2013b Release Notes

New Features

Shared Features

XML lookup table support

Users can simulate a wide range of device designs with Lumerical’s TCAD tools, the results of which get incorporated into an XML lookup table. This XML lookup table can then be associated with a specific element as the basis for a validated compact model within an INTERCONNECT project.

Vector plots in Visualizer

The data visualizer is now able to create vector plots.

More

  • FFT’s and far field projections are faster due to improved multithreading.
  • Struct and cell arrays data structures were added to the scripting language.
  • Font size in script file editor and script prompt can be changed.
  • The CAD can run script files non-graphically.
  • Index monitors can be used to view the simulation mesh in layout mode (i.e. without running the simulation engine).

MODE Solutions 6.5

User-defined material models

Users now have the ability to create plugin materials and directly modify the update equations. This will allow for arbitrary nonlinear materials, negative index materials and many other forms of electric and magnetic field updates. Please see the User-defined models section of the Reference Guide for more detail.

In addition, the following new material models have been added to the Material database (and more material models will be introduced in the future):

  1. image, image materials: users can now specify the image and image terms for nonlinear simulations. An arbitrary dispersive base material can also be specified, in which case the added polarization will be in addition to the polarization of any base material that is selected.

  2. Paramagnetic materials: users can now specify both the Permittivity and Permeability to simulate magnetic materials.

  3. A image Raman Kerr model based on the references below. This can be used model the Raman effect in Silicon. Some examples include soliton propagation and four-wave mixing.
    Goorjian and Taflove, Optics Letters, 1992, 180-182
    Allen Taflove, Computational Electromagnetics: The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method. Boston: Artech House, (2005)

  4. A Four-Level, Two-Electron laser model based on the references below. This can be used to model gain and lasing dynamics.
    Chang and Taflove, Optics Express, 2004, 3827-3833
    Allen Taflove, Computational Electromagnetics: The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method. Boston: Artech House, (2005)

    Please see the Waveguides - Nonlinear and Gain for examples that use these new material models.

DEVICE 3.0

3D solver

DEVICE is now capable of simulating fully three dimensional geometries. The solver type can be chosen by the user to be 2D or 3D. This means that arbitrary structures particularly where slicing or averaging of imported 3D data is not valid can now be solved for in 3 dimensions.

Visualization

The visualizer has been updated for 3D simulations to allow the user to better view the results, enabling image plots, arbitrary slices of the 3D geometry or line plots of various types of data.

Field and charge monitors

A new object type, monitor, has been added to DEVICE. 2D/3D monitors can be placed anywhere within the simulation region to record the total charge within the monitor and/or electric field through the monitor boundaries.

Continue from previous solution

It is now possible to specify a project file that has already been run as a reference project for solving another simulation. The initialization step in the solver can be skipped with this feature, using the converged solution of the specified file. This will save a lot of time in memory intensive simulations.

New script commands
The following script functions were added. For more information, see the function descriptions in the scripting section of the Reference Guide.
all, any, quadtri, unstructuredataset, loadsweep, savesweep, var, std

INTERCONNECT 3.0

Results manager and Visualizer

The Results Manager is a tool for analyzing simulation data. This includes a Results View window which displays all the results for the simulation object that is currently selected in the Object Tree. The Results Manager also includes a Script Workspace and a Script Favorites window, providing additional GUI-based functionalities.

Also featured in INTERCONNECT 2.5 is an updated Visualizer, which significantly simplifies the process of visualizing simulation data. When used in conjunction, Results Manager and the Visualizer provide a very useful and intuitive way of analyzing and visualizing variables and results through the GUI, greatly reducing the need for scripting.

Datasets

Lumerical datasets are structured data objects that collect a set of related matrices into a single convenient object, allowing one to package raw data into meaningful results that can be easily parameterized and visualized.

See Dataset introduction for more information.

Associated files

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