A Generalized FDTD Method with Absorbing Boundary Condition for Solving a Time-Dependent Linear Schrodinger Equation

Abstract

The Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method is a well-known technique for the analysis of quantum devices. It solves a discretized Schrodinger equation in an iterative process. However, the method provides only a second-order accurate numerical solution and requires that the spatial grid size and time step should satisfy a very restricted condition in order to prevent the numerical solution from diverging. In this article, we present a generalized FDTD method with absorbing boundary condition for solving the one-dimensional (1D) time-dependent Schr?dinger equation and obtain a more relaxed condition for stability. The generalized FDTD scheme is tested by simulating a particle moving in free space and then hitting an energy potential. Numerical results coincide with those obtained based on the theoretical analysis.

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F. Moxley III, F. Zhu and W. Dai, "A Generalized FDTD Method with Absorbing Boundary Condition for Solving a Time-Dependent Linear Schrodinger Equation," American Journal of Computational Mathematics, Vol. 2 No. 3, 2012, pp. 163-172. doi: 10.4236/ajcm.2012.23022.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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