Parallel FDTD Modeling of Nonlocality in Plasmonics

As nanofabrication techniques become more precise, with ever smaller feature sizes, the ability to model nonlocal effects in plasmonics becomes increasingly important. Although models based on hydrodynamics have been implemented using various computational electromagnetics techniques, finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) version has remained elusive. Here, we present a comprehensive FDTD implementation of hydrodynamics, including parallel computing. subnanometer step size is required resolve effects, makes cost affordable. We first validate our algorithms for small spherical metallic particles, and find that nonlocality smears out staircasing artifacts at metal surfaces, increasing accuracy over local models. this also larger nanostructure sharp extrusions. The large simulation, where are clearly present, highlights importance impact FDTD.