A General-Purpose Simulator for Metamaterials with Three-Dimensional Elements

In this paper we present two simulation techniques for modeling periodic structures with three-dimensional elements in general. The first of these is based on the Method of Moments (MoM) and is suitable for thin-wire structures, which could be either PEC or plasmonic, e. g., nanowires at optical wavelengths. The second is a Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD)-based approach, which is well suited for handling arbitrary, inhomogeneous, three-dimensional periodic structures. Neither of the two approaches make use of the "traditional" Periodic Boundary Conditions (PBCs), and are free from the difficulties encountered in the application of the PBC, as for instance slowness in convergence (MoM) and instabilities (FDTD).