Constitutive Relations, Dissipation, and Reciprocity for the Maxwell Equations in the Time Domain

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to establish general constitutive relations for the electromagnetic fields E, D, B, and H in a time domain setting. The four basic assumptions of the medium are linearity, invariance to time translations, causality, and continuity. These four assumptions imply that the constitutive relations are convolutions of the Riemann-Stieltjes type. A review of the classification of media in bianisotropic, biisotropic, anisotropic, and isotropic media, respectively, is made. Dissipation and reciprocity are defined and the constraints these concepts make on the constitutive relations are analyzed. Furthermore, an appropriate form of time reversal and functions of positive type are introduced and some consequences of these concepts are showed.