Electromagnetic radiation is everywhere
The light you see, the WiFi in your home, the microwaves that heat your food, the warmth of the sun, the X-rays at a clinic — these are all the same thing: electromagnetic waves. They differ only in their wavelength. Lined up from the longest waves to the shortest, they form the electromagnetic spectrum, and the light your eyes can see is just a thin sliver in the middle of it.
We can model it with simulation
When an electromagnetic wave meets an object, it can bounce off, bend, pass through, or be absorbed. Exactly what happens depends on the object's shape and what it is made of. Rather than build the object and measure it in a lab, we can predict all of this on a computer. That is what electromagnetic simulation does: it solves the physical laws that govern these waves, known as Maxwell's equations, for one specific design and tells you how it will behave before you build it.
Some things we model
Getting these waves right matters for a huge range of technology. Antennas and radar steer energy through the air. Photonic chips guide light to move data inside computers. Metalenses bend light to focus an image without a bulky glass lens. Chip packages route high-speed signals without letting them interfere. Each one is designed, in part, by simulating how electromagnetic waves move through it.
Planck Labs is building an integrated design platform for high-frequency 3D devices, with a high-order electromagnetic solver at its core.