ntroduction
CAMFR (CAvity Modelling FRamework) is a fast, flexible, friendly full-vectorial Maxwell solver. Although it can tackle general electromagnetic problems, its main focus is on applications in the field of photonics, like
- wavelength-scale microstructures (like photonic crystal devices)
- lasers (like vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers)
- light-emitting diodes (like resonant-cavity LEDs)
While other methods (like e.g. FDTD) rely on spatial discretisation and finite differences to solve Maxwell's equations, CAMFR treats the field as a sum of local eigenmodes in each z-invariant layer. Because this frequency-domain approach does not require spatial discretisation, CAMFR can be orders of magnitude faster than FDTD for a large class of structures.
Additionally, it can incorporate advanced boundary conditions (like e.g. PML), which can drastically improve simulation accurary and speed.
Features
CAMFR is an ongoing active research project, started at the photonics group of the Department of Information Technology (INTEC) at Ghent University in Belgium. This means that it contains many attractive features and algorithms currently not yet found in commercial modelling tools. CAMFR can be used to calculate
- the scattering matrix of a structure
- the field inside a structure, for any given excitation
- band diagrams of an infinite periodic structure
- threshold material gain and resonance wavelength of laser modes
- the response to a current source in an arbitrary cavity
- structures terminated by a semi-infinite repetition of another structure
This functionality is currently available for two types of geometries:
- 2D Cartesian structures
- 3D cylindrical symmetric structures
Defining structures is quite straightforward, either layer-by-layer, or using geometric primitive shapes. There are also integrated plotting routines for rapid simulation feedback.