NAME

       mpb - compute eigenmodes of periodic dielectric structures

SYNOPSIS

       mpb [OPTION]... [DEFINITION]... [CTLFILE]...

DESCRIPTION

       MIT  Photonic  Bands  (MPB)  is  a free program to compute the band structures (dispersion
       relations) and electromagnetic modes of periodic dielectric structures, and is  applicable
       both  to photonic crystals (photonic band-gap materials) and a wide range of other optical
       problems. Its  features  include:  fully-vectorial,  3D  computations;  a  flexible  user-
       interface  based  upon  the  GNU  Guile  scripting  language;  output  in  HDF format; and
       iterative, targeted eigensolver methods to address very large problems by solving for only
       a few states near a specified frequency.

       More  information on MPB, including a detailed manual, can be found online at the MPB home
       page: http://ab-initio.mit.edu/mpb/

       A typical invocation of MPB looks like:

           mpb foo.ctl >& foo.out

       This causes MPB to process the control file foo.ctl and redirect its  output  to  foo.out.
       (One  typically redirects output to a file, as the output is verbose and contains a number
       of comma-delimited datasets that one can extract by grepping.)

       You can also use MPB in an interactive mode, in which you can type  in  MPB  commands  (in
       Scheme/Guile)  and  immediately  see  their results.  Interactive mode is entered when you
       invoke mpb with no control  files,  or  if  your  control  files  don't  contain  any  run
       statements  (which  disable interactive mode), or if the last control file ends by setting
       (set! interactive? true) in which case interactive mode is entered after the control files
       execute.

       Another  useful  feature  is  that you can alter parameters in your control files from the
       command line, by including definitions of the form  variable=value  as  arguments  to  mpb
       (before  the  control files).  This overrides the values of variables defined with define-
       param in the control file (including all of the predefined MPB input variables).

       Multiple control files and definitions are executed in sequence, in  the  order  they  are
       specified on the command line.

OPTIONS

       -h, --help
              Display help on the command-line options and usage.

       -V, --version
              Print the version number and copyright info for mpb.

       -v, --verbose
              Verbose output.

BUGS

       Send bug reports to S. G. Johnson, stevenj@alum.mit.edu.

AUTHORS

       Written  by  Steven G. Johnson.  Copyright (c) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by the Massachusetts
       Institute of Technology.

SEE ALSO

       mpb-split(1), mpb-data(1)