Method for calculation of average power
CharlesDove opened this issue · comments
Hi @flaport! For a project I'm working on, I need to calculate the average power (intensity) of light. Ex. simulate imaging it on a detector. Is there a method that you'd recommend for doing that? I've tried using a detector to average the intensity over the last X simulation timesteps, but that so far doesn't seem to give correct results. Thanks!
Hmmm this has been a while for me since I did these kind of calculations... Anyway... the average power going through a detector should be related to the poynting vector S=E×H (or in the simulation units used here: S=cE×H). The average power flowing through a detector with surface area A should hence be given by something like this:
P = AS·n
with n unit vector in the direction of the normal of the surface (detector)