Numerical methods for the bidimensional Maxwell--Bloch equations in nonlinear crystals (Q2489715)

This paper presents three numerical schemes and corresponding numerical results for the 2-D Maxwell-Bloch equations in nonlinear optical crystals. The first scheme is the 2-D finite-difference-time-domain (FDTD) scheme, which discretizes the wave-field described by two vectors of the magnetic and electric fields with a Yee scheme adapted to take the polarization and the density matrix into account. This scheme, developed earlier by one of the authors, is computationally expensive to be really useful for distances longer than a few dozens of microns. Therefore, in this paper, two other schemes are also presented, which are addressed this problem. The second scheme of the paper uses a pseudospectral method. The time derivatives are still obtained by finite differences, but the spatial derivatives are obtained by mean of a Fourier transform. This scheme is much simpler than the previous one as the use of staggered grids in space for the electric and magnetic fields are no longer mandatory to ensure a second-order scheme. Because of the wraparound effect of the discrete Fourier transform (in this case, the pulses, which physically should leave the domain, reenter the computational domain and may interfere with the pulses still in propagation), absorbing layers are to be added to the computational domain. This scheme can be easily parallelized. The last scheme presented is an FDTF scheme and addresses the main drawback of the first scheme. In this scheme the three components of the nonlinear polarization are computed at the same points in space. Here, the wave-field is described by two vectors of the magnetic field and electric induction. The nonlinear polarization term is not explicitly involved in the Maxwell equations. This FDTD scheme is quite fast to solve compared to the first scheme. It is also shown the high complexity of the nonlinearity rendered by the Maxwell-Bloch model, that could be explained by the interplay between the anisotropy of the material and the optical nonlinearities. The numerical experiments are carried out for highlighting numerical problems and studying the validity of the Maxwell-Bloch model. In particular, the cases of second harmonic generation with and without phase matching are considered.