Numerical resolution of an electromagnetic inverse medium problem at fixed frequency

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to solve numerically the inverse problem of determining the complex refractive index of an electromagnetic medium from partial boundary field measurements at a fixed frequency. The governing equations are the time-harmonic Maxwell equations formulated in electric field in a two-dimensional bounded domain. We express the inverse problem as the minimization of a cost function representing the difference between the measured and predicted fields. Our numerical reconstruction algorithm combines the BFGS method and an iterative process, called the Adaptive Eigenspace Inversion. The unknown complex coefficient is expanded in terms of eigenfunctions of an elliptic operator. Both the eigenspace and the mesh are iteratively adapted during the minimization procedure. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of the reconstruction for various configurations.