A staggered discontinuous Galerkin method for the curl-curl operator

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a staggered discontinuous Galerkin method for the curl–curl operator arising from the time-harmonic Maxwell equations. One distinctive feature of the method is that the discrete operators preserve the properties of the differential operators. Moreover, the numerical solution automatically satisfies a discrete divergence-free condition. Stability and optimal convergence of the method are analysed. Numerical experiments for smooth and singular solutions are shown to verify the optimal order of convergence. Furthermore, the method is applied to the corresponding eigenvalue problem. Numerical results for rectangular and L-shaped domains show that our method is able to produce nonspurious eigenvalues.