The iFDTD is a software made for fast and easy electrodynamic simulations. Its biggest strength lies in the visualization of electrodynamic effects like total internal reflection, light propagation in photonic crystals etc.

With the freely available interactive FDTD toolbox you can simulate and visualize the electromagnetic field in a structured material such as a photonic crystals, waveguides or investigate refraction at dielectric boundaries and diffraction in free space.

In this second tutorial we will show how to define a refractive index profile n(r) within the interactive FDTD toolbox. We will simulate the total internal reflection in a glass prism using a Gaussian shaped beam.

In the third tutorial of the interactive FDTD toolbox we will simulate the light propagation inside a photonic crystal. We will see that it will be very intuitive to understand the reflection at a defect and the use of a photonic crystal as beam splitter.

In this first tutorial we want to demonstrate the effects of perfectly matched layer boundary conditions and get to know the interactive FDTD toolbox.