A 4th-order accurate unconditionally-stable IMS-FDTD method with low numerical dispersion<FNR></FNR><FN>The work presented in this paper was supported by Siemens Portugal, Department of Wired and Optical Networks, Optical Research Group. </FN>.

This paper presents a 4th-order accurate implicit multistage finite-difference time-domain (IMS-FDTD) method. The analysis of the stability shows that this IMS-FDTD method is unconditionally stable. In addition, its numerical-dispersion relation is derived and the analysis shows that its performance is better than those of conventional unconditionally-stable implicit FDTD methods and is even better than those of some conditionally-stable explicit FDTD methods, such as the Fang(2, 4)-FDTD method. &#169; 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 48: 1383–1385, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.21646 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]