L p Estimates for Maxwell's Equations with Source Term

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to establish interior and global L p -type estimates for the solutions of Maxwell's equations with source term in a domain filled with two different materials separated by a 𝒞2 interface. The usual elliptic estimates cannot be applied directly, due to the singularity of the dielectric permittivity. A special curl-div decomposition is introduced for the electric field to reduce the problem to an elliptic equation in divergence form with jump coefficients. The potential analysis and the jump condition lead to the interior L p estimates which are superior to the straightforward Nash-Moser estimates. The reduction procedure is expected to be useful for future numerical simulation. Because of the natural physical requirements, the boundary condition is nonlocal and involves a first order pseudo-differential operator, the boundary estimate is established by delicate new maximum principles and Riesz convexity arguments. These estimates are then employed to solve a nonlinear optics problem that arises in the modeling of surface enhanced second-harmonic generation of nonlinear diffractive optics in periodic structures (gratings).