Fast multi-source nanophotonic simulations using augmented partial factorization

Numerical solutions of Maxwell’s equations are indispensable for nanophotonics and electromagnetics but are constrained when it comes to large systems, especially multi-channel ones such as disordered media, aperiodic metasurfaces and densely packed photonic circuits where the many inputs require many large-scale simulations. Conventionally, before extracting the quantities of interest, Maxwell’s equations are first solved on every element of a discretization basis set that contains much more information than is typically needed. Furthermore, such simulations are often performed one input at a time, which can be slow and repetitive. Here we propose to bypass the full-basis solutions and directly compute the quantities of interest while also eliminating the repetition over inputs. We do so by augmenting the Maxwell operator with all the input source profiles and all the output projection profiles, followed by a single partial factorization that yields the entire generalized scattering matrix via the Schur complement, with no approximation beyond discretization. This method applies to any linear partial differential equation. Benchmarks show that this approach is 1,000–30,000,000 times faster than existing methods for two-dimensional systems with about 10,000,000 variables. As examples, we demonstrate simulations of entangled photon backscattering from disorder and high-numerical-aperture metalenses that are thousands of wavelengths wide.