AIPLAB — Adaptive & Integrated Photonics Lab

Education - PHOT 411 Numerical Methods for Photonics

PHOT 411 Numerical Methods for Photonics

Course to be given during the spring semester of 2024-2025 over 14 weeks (2 hours theory + 2 hours practice), please see also the syllabus. Course materials will be added during the semester.

Lecture materials

The first part of the lectures covers general numerical methods and follows mostly Johan Larsson's course notes of his course on "Numerical Methods in Engineering". Afterwards we steer towards applications in photonics using the textbook "Numerical methods in photonics" by Lavrinenko et al. The book chapters in the last column of following table refer to the textbooks:
  1. [Larsson] Johan Larsson: Numerical Methods in Engineering, University of Maryland (2023)
  2. [Chapra] Steven C. Chapra, Raymond P. Canale: Numerical Methods for Engineers, McGraw-Hill Education (2015)
  3. [lavrinenko] Lavrinenko et al., Numerical methods in photonics, CRC Press (2014)
Lecture Topics Slides Book
1 Introduction to numerical problems (0.pdf) (html) (pdf) Larsson - Ch. 1
2 Root finding methods (html) Larsson - Ch. 2
3 Interpolation, integration (html) Larsson - Ch. 3-4
4 Differentiation (html) Larsson - Ch. 5
5 Solving ordinary differential equations [to be uploaded] Larsson - Ch. 5, 8
5 Eigenvalue equations [to be uploaded] e.g. Chapra - Ch. 9-12
5 Iterative methods and stability [to be uploaded] Larsson - Ch. 9-12
6 Partial differencial equations: Finite-differences [to be uploaded] Larsson - Ch. 9
8 Finite-difference time domain method [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 3
9 Finite-difference time domain method (Cont'd) [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 3
10 Finite-difference methods in waveguides [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 4
11 Nonlinear [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 5
12 Modal methods [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 6
13 Finite element method [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 8
14 Finite element method (Cont'd) [to be uploaded] Lavrinenko - Ch. 8

Exam questions & solutions

These are questions and solutions of example exams and/or previous midterm and final exams (and retake opportunities)
Year Exam name Questions Solutions
2024-2025 Example midterm exam [to be uploaded] [to be uploaded]
2024-2025 Example final exam [to be uploaded] [to be uploaded]