Nonreflecting boundary condition for time-dependent multiple scattering

Abstract

An exact nonreflecting boundary condition (NBC) is derived for the numerical solution of time-dependent multiple scattering problems in three space dimensions, where the scatterer consists of several disjoint components. Because each sub-scatterer can be enclosed by a separate artificial boundary, the computational effort is greatly reduced and becomes independent of the relative distances between the different sub-domains. In fact, the computational work due to the NBC only requires a fraction of the computational work inside Ω, due to any standard finite difference or finite element method, independently of the mesh size or the desired overall accuracy. Therefore, the overall numerical scheme retains the rate of convergence of the interior scheme without increasing the complexity of the total computational work. Moreover, the extra storage required depends only on the geometry and not on the final time. Numerical examples show that the NBC for multiple scattering is as accurate as the NBC for a single convex artificial boundary [M.J. Grote, J.B. Keller, Nonreflecting boundary conditions for time-dependent scattering, J. Comput. Phys. 127(1) (1996), 52–65], while being more efficient due to the reduced size of the computational domain.