On Time-Domain NRBC for Maxwell’s Equations and Its Application in Accurate Simulation of Electromagnetic Invisibility Cloaks

Abstract

In this paper, we present analytic formulas of the temporal convolution kernel functions involved in the time-domain non-reflecting boundary condition (NRBC) for the electromagnetic scattering problems. Such exact formulas themselves lead to accurate and efficient algorithms for computing the NRBC for domain reduction of the time-domain Maxwell’s system in $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ . A second purpose of this paper is to derive a new time-domain model for the electromagnetic invisibility cloak. Different from the existing models, it contains only one unknown field and the seemingly complicated convolutions can be computed as efficiently as the temporal convolutions in the NRBC. The governing equation in the cloaking layer is valid for general geometry, e.g., a spherical or polygonal layer. Here, we aim at simulating the spherical invisibility cloak. We take the advantage of radially stratified dispersive media and special geometry, and develop an efficient vector spherical harmonic-spectral-element method for its accurate simulation. Compared with limited results on FDTD simulation, the proposed method is optimal in both accuracy and computational cost. Indeed, the saving in computational time is significant.