MEEP: A flexible, free-software package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method

This workshop will explore the various capabilities and inner workings of the open-source finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) software package for electromagnetism developed at MIT known as MEEP. Since its initial public release in 2006, MEEP has become a popular tool in the photonics community given its extensive feature set and ability to support large-scale, parallelized computations. I will describe some of its key functionalities including pervasive interpolation, advanced signal processing, sub-pixel averaging, adiabatic absorbers and scripting capability that are distinguishing characteristics of our code. Several examples relevant to current research in nanophotonic and photovoltaic devices will also be discussed. This workshop will be divided into two parts: the first will be presented to a general audience interested in computational electromagnetism and the second to researchers in the Michigan area interested in utilizing MEEP in their work via a hands-on tutorial with the code.
Dr. Ardavan Oskooi is currently a research fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Professor Stephen R. Forrest's Optoelectronic Components and Materials group here at UM earlier this year, he was a JSPS postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electronic Science and Engineering at Kyoto University in Japan where he investigated enhanced light-trapping designs in nanostructured silicon thin films. Dr. Oskooi graduated with a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2010 where he worked with the groups of Professor Steven G. Johnson in Applied Mathematics and John D. Joannopoulos in Physics on computational research into nanophotonics. He obtained a master's degree from MIT in Computation for Design and Optimization in 2008 and a bachelors degree, with honors, in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto in 2004. Dr. Oskooi is one of the core developers of MEEP..