Comparison of five computational methods for computing Q factors in photonic crystal membrane cavities

Five state-of-the-art computational methods are benchmarked by computing quality factors and resonance wavelengths in photonic crystal membrane L5 and L9 line defect cavities. The convergence of the methods with respect to resolution, degrees of freedom and number of modes is investigated. Special attention is paid to the influence of the size of the computational domain. Convergence is not obtained for some of the methods, indicating that some are more suitable than others for analysing line defect cavities.