In this article, we consider the time-dependent Maxwell’s equations modeling wave propagation in metamaterials. One-order higher global superclose results in the L2 norm are proved for several semidiscrete and fully discrete schemes developed for solving this model using nonuniform cubic and rectangular edge elements. Furthermore, L ∞ superconvergence at element centers is proved for the lowest order rectangular edge element. To our best knowledge, such pointwise superconvergence result and its proof are original, and we are unaware of any other publications on this issue.

In this paper we develop a leap-frog-type finite element method for modeling the electromagnetic wave propagation in metamaterials. The metamaterial model equations are represented by integrodifferential Maxwell’s equations, which are quite challenging to analyze and solve in that we have to solve a coupled problem with different partial differential equations given in different material regions. Our method is based on a mixed finite element method using edge elements, which can easily handle the tangential continuity of the electric field. Stability analysis and optimal error estimate are carried out for the proposed scheme. The scheme is implemented and confirmed to obey the proved optimal convergence rate by using a smooth analytical solution. Then the scheme is extended to model wave propagation in heterogeneous media composed of metamaterials and free space, and extensive numerical results (using a rectangular edge element, a triangular edge element, and mixed edge elements) demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm for modeling the exotic backward wave propagation phenomenon in metamaterials. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper with an exhaustive simulation of backward wave propagation in metamaterials using time-domain finite element methods.

Since 2000, the study of metamaterial has been a very hot topic due to its potential applications in many areas such as design of invisibility cloak and sub-wavelength imaging. Although several metamaterial models are often used by physicists and engineers, the study of their mathematical properties has lagged behind. In this paper, we initiate our investigation in the plasma-Lorentz model. More specifically, we first discuss the well-posedness of this model, then develop two fully-discrete finite element methods for solving it. Detailed stability and error analysis are carried out, and 3-D numerical results justifying our theoretical analysis are presented.

In this paper we develop an adaptive edge finite element method based on a reliable and efficient recovery type a posteriori error estimator for time-harmonic Maxwell equations. The asymptotically exact a posteriori error estimator is based on the superconvergence result proved for the lowest-order edge element on triangular grids, where most pairs of triangles sharing a common edge form approximate parallelograms. The efficiency and robustness of the proposed method is demonstrated by extensive numerical experiments for electromagnetic cloaking problems with highly anisotropic permittivity and permeability.

In this work, we investigate wave transmission property through a zero index metamaterial (ZIM) waveguide embedded with rectangular dielectric defects. We show that total reflection and total transmission (cloaking) can be achieved by adjusting the geometric sizes and/or permittivities of the defects. Our work provides another possibility of manipulating wave propagation through ZIM in addition to the widely studied dielectric defects with cylindrical geometries.