Lanczos–Chebyshev pseudospectral methods for wave-propagation problems

The pseudospectral approach is a well-established method for studies of the wave propagation in various settings. In this paper, we report that the implementation of the pseudospectral approach can be simplified if power-series expansions are used. There is also an added advantage of an improved computational efficiency. We demonstrate how this approach can be implemented for two-dimensional (2D) models that may include material inhomogeneities. Physically relevant examples, taken from optics, are presented to show that, using collocations at Chebyshev points, the power-series approximation may give very accurate 2D soliton solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation. To find highly accurate numerical periodic solutions in models including periodic modulations of material parameters, a real-time evolution method (RTEM) is used. A variant of RTEM is applied to a system involving the copropagation of two pulses with different carrier frequencies, that cannot be easily solved by other existing methods.

► We show that power series expansions can be used effectively in the pseudospectral solution of differential equations. ► We demonstrate that it is easy to implement this power series approach and computational cost could be reduced. ► As examples, results for wave propagation in complex optical systems are given. ► Procedures allowing one to use the real-time evolution method for finding stationary solutions are detailed.