Bidirectional beam propagation method based on the method of lines for the analysis of photonic band gap structures

The bidirectional beam propagation method based on the method of lines is proposed as an innovative and efficient algorithm to investigate the optical properties of photonic band gap (PBG) structures. A few examples illustrate the application of this technique to the modeling of passive, lossy and active one-dimensional and index confined PBG structures. The algorithm results are validated by comparison with those obtained via the transfer matrix method, the mode-matching method and the finite difference time domain method. With respect to these methods, the present algorithm exhibits accurate results with reduced computer resources.