Multigrid Convergence for Second Order Elliptic Problems with Smooth Complex Coefficients

The finite element method when applied to a second order partial differential equation in divergence form can generate operators that are neither Hermitian nor definite when the coefficient function is complex valued. For such problems, under a uniqueness assumption, we prove the continuous dependence of the exact solution and its finite element approximations on data provided that the coefficients are smooth and uniformly bounded away from zero. Then we show that a multigrid algorithm converges once the coarse mesh size is smaller than some fixed number, providing an efficient solver for computing discrete approximations. Numerical experiments, while confirming the theory, also reveal pronounced sensitivity of Gauss-Seidel iterations on the ordering of the unknowns for certain problems

An Efficient Method for Band Structure Calculations in 3D Photonic Crystals

A method for computing band structures for three-dimensional photonic crystals is described. The method combines a mixed finite element discretization on a uniform grid with a fast Fourier transform preconditioner and a preconditioned subspace iteration algorithm. Numerical examples illustrating the behavior of the method are presented

A Mixed Method for Axisymmetric Div-Curl Systems

We present a mixed method for a three-dimensional axisymmetric div-curl system reduced to a two-dimensional computational domain via cylindrical coordinates. We show that when the meridian axisymmetric Maxwell problem is approximated by a mixed method using the lowest order Nédélec elements (for the vector variable) and linear elements (for the Lagrange multiplier), one obtains optimal error estimates in certain weighted Sobolev norms. The main ingredient of the analysis is a sequence of projectors in the weighted norms satisfying some commutativity properties