Meep — The Complete Guide: Open-Source FDTD Electromagnetic Simulation for Photonics
Meep is an open-source package (GPL-2.0) for electromagnetic simulation with the FDTD method. You write and run simulations in Python (as well as Scheme and C++), and it is used mainly in research and in designing optical and photonic devices.
Meep
NanoComp / Meep developers
FDTD electromagnetic simulation for photonics — waveguides, resonators, photonic crystals and inverse design.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Dimensions — 1D, 2D and 3D calculations, plus cylindrical coordinates.
- Materials — anisotropic, dispersive and nonlinear.
- PML boundaries — absorbing layers that mimic open space.
- Parallel computing — runs on many cores with MPI.
- Analysis and design — mode decomposition, near-to-far field transformation and an adjoint solver for inverse design.
Installation and use
The recommended installation is through Conda. There is no native Windows installation — use WSL with Ubuntu. All work is done in scripts, so it is convenient to run it from a JupyterLab notebook and see fields and results right away.
Related tools
For antennas, RF and PCB structures — openEMS. For a quick demonstration of light rays, lenses and mirrors — Ray Optics Simulation. For the scripting environment — Python.
openEMS
Thorsten Liebig and contributors
A 3D FDTD electromagnetic field solver — antennas, RF filters and PCB structures, scripted in Octave, MATLAB or Python.
Get it from the vendor
Ray Optics Simulation
Ray Optics Simulation Project
Light ray simulation in the browser — lenses, mirrors and optical fibres.
Get it from the vendor
Python
Python Software Foundation
The language behind most modern engineering computation, and its full ecosystem.
Get it from the vendor
JupyterLab
Project Jupyter
Interactive computing notebooks — code, results, plots and explanations in one shareable document.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Meep is an established research tool for photonic simulation — free for any use, for anyone who works in Python and Linux.