A Frequency-Dependent LOD-FDTD Method and Its Application to the Analyses of Plasmonic Waveguide Devices

Detailed frequency-dependent formulations are presented for several efficient locally one-dimensional finite-difference time-domain methods (LOD-FDTDs) based on the recursive convolution (RC), piecewise linear RC (PLRC), trapezoidal RC (TRC), auxiliary differential equation, and mmb Z transform techniques. The performance of each technique is investigated through the analyses of surface plasmon waveguides, the dispersions of which are expressed by the Drude and Drude-Lorentz models. The simple TRC technique requiring a single convolution integral is found to offer the comparable accuracy to the PLRC technique with two convolution integrals. As an application, a plasmonic grating filter is studied using the TRC-LOD-FDTD. The use of an apodized and a chirped grating is found quite effective in reducing sidelobes in the transmission spectrum, maintaining a large bandgap. Furthermore, a plasmonic microcavity is analyzed, in which a defect section is introduced into a grating filter. Varying the air core width is shown to exhibit tunable properties of the resonance wavelength.