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

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.本研究开发了MAXIM，一款基于严格耦合波分析（rigorous coupled-wave analysis）的电磁波仿真软件。该软件的核心优势在于搭载了直观的图形用户界面（graphical user interface），大幅降低了非计算机编程背景人员的使用门槛，极大提升了软件的易用性。本文详细阐述了MAXIM所集成的基础理论公式与计算方法，并针对MAXIM的核心应用场景——介质超表面，选取若干教学示例对其计算性能开展了评估。将本软件的计算结果与基于时域有限差分法（finite-difference time-domain method）的商用软件进行对比后证实，两款程序的计算结果高度吻合，相对误差仅在1%以内。鉴于其易用性强、应用范围广且可靠性高，MAXIM将为超表面与纳米光子学相关研究领域的发展提供有力支持。