News: Optoelectronics
11 March 2026
Photon Design showcasing new HAROLD QD laser simulator and silicon modulator design tool at OFC
In booth #1155 at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC 2026) in Los Angeles, CA, USA (15–19 March), photonic simulation CAD software developer Photon Design Ltd of Oxford, UK is showcasing its newly released HAROFLD QD laser simulator and silicon modulator design tool. It is also featuring its full suite of passive simulation tools for waveguide components (such as ring resonators, Mach–Zehnder interferometers, and arrayed-waveguide gratings), and its active simulation tools (for lasers and modulators).
The HAROLD QD quantum dot laser simulator was officially released ahead of the show. “Used for simulating quantum dot laser epitaxy structures, it enables engineers to design quantum dot lasers; an important new type of laser critical to next-generation data centers, AI, and HPC applications,” says CEO Dr Dominic Gallagher. “QD lasers provide unparalleled, high-temperature operation and improved modulation, data transmission, and power efficiency, over existing lasers. They also bring practical, silicon-based manufacturing benefits, with quantum dots grown directly on silicon waveguides. Seamless integration into Photon Design’s PICWAVE, to give engineers three-dimensional, time-evolving quantum dot laser models, will follow shortly,” he adds.
“In addition, HAROLD, Photon Design’s advanced heterostructure semiconductor and laser simulator, developed for Fabry–Perot and vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) quantum well (QW) laser design, now allows engineers to design silicon modulators. The long-established laser design tool provides thorough modelling of carrier diffusion, charge accumulation and the resultant plasma effect, essential to silicon modulation,” Gallagher continues.
“The company will feature its full suite of simulation tools, including new features and innovations in its other EigenMode Expansion (EME)-based design tools, such as MT-FIMMPROP. EME-based simulations enable rapid 3D processing, taking only minutes to produce simulations on a standard laptop, where industry-standard FDTD (finite-difference time domain)-based simulations would take many hours. The Multi-Topology (MT)-FIMMPROP simulator enables thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) designs for high-data-rate photonics applications, and the EPIPPROP can now model split waveguides for designing polarization-dependant arrayed waveguides.”
Photon Design showcasing simulation tool innovations at Photonics West
