MAXIM: Metasurfaces-oriented Maxwell simulation software with intuitive graphical user interfaces

Abstract

We develop MAXIM which is electromagnetic wave simulation software based on rigorous coupled-wave analysis. The principal advantage of MAXIM is an intuitive graphical user interface drastically improving the accessibility of the software to who are not familiar with computer programming. Here, we present the basic formulation and computation methods that are incorporated in MAXIM. The computation performance is also evaluated for several didactic examples of dielectric metasurfaces which are the main application of MAXIM. The comparison of the calculation results with commercial software based on a finite-difference time-domain method confirms that the computation results of two programs coincide closely with each other within 1% difference. Considering the easy accessibility, wide availability and high reliability, MAXIM will serve the development of related research fields of metasurfaces and nanophotonics.