Photonic crystal with anisotropic material

What is the best way to simulate photonic crystals with aniotropic materials? The axes of the anisotropic material do not coincide with axes of photonic crytsal

Try to separate the problem in 3 subproblems: respectively for the axis x, y and z.

I have a small doubt here. What if the non-diagonal terms of the dielectric tensor are not zero. Will splitting the problem still work ? Let me know

-svarun

I agree with svarun. It depends on the structure and on the incidence angle. If, lets say, the direction of the E-field coincides with the direction of anisotropy, that introduces no complication. The best solution, in my opinion, is to use a 3 dimensional solver. For instance, with MWS (and with more than 2 gigs of RAM), you can easily simulate a 3D photonic crystal with an acceptable accuracy. Considering the availability of 64 bit dual-core CPUs and reasonably cheap memories, I beleive there is no much need for 2 dimensional codes. I was wandering through PC vendors and I noticed that I can buy a 3 GHz dual core system with 4 Gigs of RAM less than 2200$. I can't imagine buying such a PC 2 years ago. You may also check RSOFT's fullwave. It has a 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional FDTD solver. I myself use both MWS and fullwave.