BPM Solver

BeamLab’s BPM Solver implements the so-called Beam Propagation Method (BPM) in your familiar MATLAB® environment. The BPM is a popular simulation technique for evaluating the evolution of optical fields in waveguides, photonic devices, and in free space. It takes advantage of the fact that light in such devices predominantly propagates along a particular direction, e.g., the axis of a fiber, and thus can efficiently simulate light propagation in large non-uniform structures that extend over many thousand wavelengths. Input field distributions based on a waveguide’s eigenmode can be generated by BeamLab’s Mode Solver.

Key Features

MATLAB® environment

  • Intuitive user interface directly integrated in the MATLAB® environment
  • Solve complex optical problems with just a few lines of code
  • No hassle with learning a new proprietary language
  • No need for third-party APIs for transferring your data to and from MATLAB®
  • Platform-independent (Windows, macOS, Linux)
MATLAB® Enabled

Advanced BPM algorithms

  • Highly optimized algorithms implemented natively in MATLAB®
  • Full-vectorial and semi-vectorial BPM algorithms based on the finite difference method
  • 3D or 2D analysis
  • Wide-angle beam propagation using Padé approximants
  • Various types of boundary and symmetry conditions

Anisotropy and nonlinearity

  • Analysis of bends and twists in waveguides
  • Analysis of anisotropic waveguides with different anisotropies in different waveguide parts (e.g., core, substrate and cladding)
  • Analysis of a light wave’s polarization state when propagating through birefringent media
  • Analysis of Kerr media with nonlinear refractive indices

Utmost simulation flexibility

  • Large variety of easy-to-use waveguide and input field functions
  • High flexibility in post-processing and editing any output data and graphs
  • Input fields with arbitrary polarization states defined via Stokes vectors
  • Complex refractive indices for modeling optical attenuation or gain
  • Refractive index database for common optical materials

Powerful graphics

  • Harnessing the vast visualization options of the MATLAB® environment
  • 1D, 2D, and 3D plots with any color and shading you can imagine
  • Pseudocolor and contour plots
  • Illustrative stacked slices plots and quiver plots
  • Amazing videos for presentations, demonstrations, and publications

Parameter sweeps and optimization problems

  • Flexible MATLAB® programming language to implement any kind of parameter sweep
  • Powerful MATLAB® optimization functions such as fminsearch to optimize your photonic devices
  • Parameterize any variable for your sweeps and optimizations, e.g., waveguide geometry, refractive indices, wavelength, and many more

Parallel computing

  • Parallel computing using multicore processors (requires MATLAB® Parallel Computing Toolbox™).

Application Gallery

Directional Coupler

Beam propagation in a co-directional waveguide coupler
View demo

Multimode Interference Coupler

Beam propagation in an MMI coupler
View demo

Mach-Zehnder Modulator

Beam propagation in a Mach-Zehnder modulator
View demo