Warning This repository is a work in progress. The API will change without notice

TDMS, the Time Domain Maxwell Solver, is a hybrid C++ and MATLAB tool for solving Maxwell's equations to simulate light propagation through a medium. See the pdf documentation for further details.

TDMS needs to be built against FFTW and MATLAB, thus both need to be downloaded and installed prior to compiling TDMS. Install with

$ cd tdms
$ mkdir build; cd build
$ cmake .. \
# -DMatlab_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2019b/ \
# -DFFTW_ROOT=/usr/local/fftw3/ \
# -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/.local/ \
# -DBUILD_TESTING=ON
$ make install

where lines need to be commented in and the paths modified if cmake cannot (1) find MATLAB, (2) find FFTW or (3) install to the default install prefix.

-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=/Users/username/.local/homebrew/opt/llvm/bin/clang++
-DOMP_ROOT=/Users/username/.local/homebrew/opt/llvm/
-DCXX_ROOT=/Users/username/.local/homebrew/opt/llvm

arch -x86_64 zsh
arch -x86_64 /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
arch -x86_64 /usr/local/bin/brew install llvm

Once the executable has been compiled and installed, tdms should be in the PATH. Check that installation worked with

$ tdms -h

You can invoke it directly or call it from a MATLAB script. We recommend that beginners with MATLAB installed start with the demonstration MATLAB script.

Move into directory examples/arc_01, launch MATLAB and run the MATLAB script:

run_pstd_bscan.m

This script will generate the input to the executable, run the executable and display sample output.

You can also run tdms from the command line...

$ tdms --help
Usage:
tdms [options] infile outfile
tdms [options] infile gridfile outfile
Options:
-h:	Display this help message
-fd, --finite-difference:	Use the finite-difference solver, instead of the pseudo-spectral method.
-q:	Quiet operation. Silence all logging
-m:	Minimise output file size by not saving vertex and facet information

The basic workflow is with two arguments, an input file as specified by iterate_fdtd_matrix.m, and an output file name to be created.

You can choose two possible solver methods: either pseudo-spectral time-domain (PSTD, the default) or finite-difference (FDTD, with option --finite-difference).

TDMS is parallelised with OpenMP. The maximum number of threads can be set with the OMP_NUM_THREADS environment variable. For example, to use 4 threads, in a bash shell, use:

$ export OMP_NUM_THREADS=4

Before calling the tdms executable.

We're very grateful for bug reports, feature requests and pull requests. Please see our contribution guidelines.