pyMPB

This is a Python package for running bandstructure simulations of photonic crystals (PhCs) with MIT Photonic-Bands (MPB, http://ab-initio.mit.edu/wiki/index.php/MIT_Photonic_Bands). It creates a .ctl file, runs it, and does some postprocessing and plotting.

Features:

• supports 2D and 3D simulations
• works with anisotropic dielectric materials
• supports MPB's cylinder and block objects (but easily extendable)
• rectangular and triangular lattices
• uses mpb-data (from MPB) and h5topng (from h5utils) to export PNG-Images of calculated fields
• exports simulation results (frequencies, group velocities) to .csv files
• plots band structure diagrams with matplotlib
• predefined simulations for 2D triangular lattice of holes and 3D triangular PhC slab

Dependencies:

• MPB
• H5utils (for png export of fields)
• Python
• numpy
• matplotlib (for outputting diagrams)

Usage:

0. Inside downloaded folder, install package with pip (-e installs with symlinks, meaning you can change and update the source code without reinstalling; The dot at the end is important): pip install -e .
1. Add your material's refractive indices to data.py
2. Update defaults (programm calls etc.) in defaults.py
3. Start with predefined PhC simulations in phc_simulations.py
4. See examples in examples folder

"Disclaimer"

I am in a hurry - I need to finish my thesis. So my code is neither nice nor clean. Meanwhile, I hope somebody finds this useful!