  A numerical model based on the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is
developed to simulate thermal noise in open cavities owing to output coupling.
The absorbing boundary of the FDTD grid is treated as a blackbody, whose
thermal radiation penetrates the cavity in the grid. The calculated amount of
thermal noise in a one-dimensional dielectric cavity recovers the standard
result of the quantum Langevin equation in the Markovian regime. Our FDTD
simulation also demonstrates that in the non-Markovian regime the buildup of
the intracavity noise field depends on the ratio of the cavity photon lifetime
to the coherence time of thermal radiation. The advantage of our numerical
method is that the thermal noise is introduced in the time domain without prior
knowledge of cavity modes.
