FAST 3-DIMENSIONAL COMPUTATION OF THE OPTICAL PROPAGATION EQUATION USING A DESK-TOP PERSONAL-COMPUTER

We developed a method of computing the three-dimensional (3D) solution of the optical propagation equation using no approximation other than its picosecond pulse expression. The algorithm is fast enough to run on a personal computer (PC) with usual delays of 1 or 2 min for calcul ation. Some results are given to emphasize precision problems, but mos t of the time the high stability of the algorithm allows large calcula tion steps, up to 1 cm in some cases.