# FullyAnisotropicMedium
Fully anisotropic medium including all 9 components of the permittivity and conductivity tensors. Provided permittivity tensor and the symmetric part of the conductivity tensor must have coinciding main directions. A non-symmetric conductivity tensor can be used to model magneto-optic effects. Note that dispersive properties and subpixel averaging are currently not supported for fully anisotropic materials.
Note: Simulations involving fully anisotropic materials are computationally more intensive, thus, they take longer time to complete. This increase strongly depends on the filling fraction of the simulation domain by fully anisotropic materials, varying approximately in the range from 1.5 to 5. Cost of running a simulation is adjusted correspondingly.
# Name
name: Optional unique name for medium.
# Thermal Properties
This section appears when the task group includes a Heat solver and is omitted from a standalone FDTD task.
# Medium Type
type: Selects the thermal model under Medium Type.
Type: string
Options:
- FluidSpec: The Heat solver does not solve for temperature in regions that use this medium.
- SolidSpec: The Heat solver uses the solid thermal model.
Default: SolidSpec for a new medium in a Heat simulation.
# Thermal Conductivity
conductivity: Thermal conductivity. This field is shown when Medium Type is SolidSpec.
Type: floating-point number
- Unit: W/(μm·K)
- Constraint: greater than 0
- Required field
NOTE
The editor has no inputs for heat capacity (capacity) or density (density). When you create a medium in a Heat simulation, the editor sets capacity to 1. To set other values, use the Python interface. See Thermal Properties for the API fields.
# Optical Properties
# Full permittivity tensor
permittivity: Full relative-permittivity tensor, including off-diagonal terms.
Type: floating-point 3 × 3 array
- Default: [[1, 0, 0], [0, 1, 0], [0, 0, 1]]
# Rotated diagonally anisotropic medium
xx, yy, zz: Media for the diagonal components of the permittivity tensor before rotation.
Options:
axis: A vector that specifies the axis of rotation.
angle: Angle of rotation. The rotation has no effect until you set it.
Type: floating-point number
- Unit: degree (default unit), rad
# Conductivity
conductivity: Full electric-conductivity tensor. The imaginary part of the complex permittivity at angular frequency omega is given by conductivity/omega.
Type: floating-point 3 × 3 array
- Unit: S/μm
- Default: [[0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0], [0, 0, 0]]
# Advanced
frequency_range: Optional lower and upper frequency bounds for the medium.
Type: pair of floating-point numbers
- Unit: Hz for both values
- Constraint: each value greater than 0
- Default: None
# Allow gain
allow_gain: Enable gain medium. Caution: simulations with gain medium are unstable and are likely to diverge. Simulations with this option enabled are still charged even if they diverge. Monitor data up to the divergence point is still returned and can be useful in some cases.
Type: boolean
Default: False
# Appearance
Appearance settings control the medium’s face color and transparency in the model view. They do not change the optical properties.