Nonlinear FDTD Simulation of Optical Thin Films with Intensity-Dependent
Drude-Lorentz Parameters
Abstract
Nonlinear optical materials, such as transparent conductive oxides, have
recently drawn a lot of attention when being integrated into
metasurfaces and allowing full-optical control of the surface response.
Although several methods for modeling the nonlinear materials have been
proposed in the literature, most of them have the limitations on being
non-dispersive and of instantaneous response. In this paper, we present
a straightforward integration of an extended Drude-Lorentz model that
captures the local intensity response of nonlinear materials while being
dispersive and allowing for inertial response via a low-pass filtering
process. This method is integrated into standard finite difference
time-domain (FDTD) implementation of Maxwell’s equations and the
auxiliary differential equations approach of the Drude-Lorentz model is
extended via local intensity-dependent parameters. A numerical
demonstration shows the response for a thin film of nonlinear material,
where the parameters across the sample are time-varying with respect to
the local intensity of the fields. Therefore, showing a direct feedback
of the field profile to the nonlinear response of the material, which is
critical when incorporating such films in resonating meta-atoms.