Updating fields about fdtd HOT 3 CLOSED

No, when adding an object to the grid, the inverse_permittivity at the location of the object is set to zero:

This means that effectively, only the second update equation is used at the location of the object.

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Hi flaport,
In that sense, wasn't it better if the method _register_grid in object.py set the permittivity of the object directly in the grid. Repeating calculations can be critical when the simulation size is bigger.

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That's a fair point and in fact nothing is stopping you to do exactly that... Just do an in-place index replacement within inverse_epsilon...

The reason that I chose the Object route is that back in the day I was working on simulating photo-refractive crystals in which I was also modeling the electro-optic effect. Moreover those objects required non-diagonal epsilon elements which is a much more expensive update. Going the object-route allowed me to just have those expensive update equations in a localized component and still use the quick update equations everywhere else in the grid.

That said, for normal use cases a replacement in the grid is a much better approach and I agree we should probably make that the default.

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