Theoretical analysis of Nedelec's edge elements (Q5944160)

A special type of finite elements called edge elements are studied for the approximation of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of electromagnetic problems. The author considers two equivalent formulations for such a problem. One of them is: Find \(u\neq\theta\) and \(\lambda\in\mathbb{R}\) \[ (\text{rot }u, \text{rot }v)= \lambda(u, v),\;u\in H_0(\text{rot}; \Omega)\cap H(\text{div}^0;\Omega),\;v\in H_0(\text{rot}; \Omega), \] where \[ H_0(\text{rot}; \Omega)= \{u\in (L_2(\Omega)^3);\text{ rot }u\in (L_2(\Omega))^2\text{ and }u\wedge n= 0\text{ on }\partial\Omega\} \] and \[ H(\text{div}^0; \Omega)= \{u\in (L_2(\Omega))^3;\text{ div }u= 0\}. \] The author associates to these continuous problems via the Ritz-Galerkin method some finite element schemes, yielding the edge elements. The aim of the paper is to prove the discrete compactness of the spaces of edge elements in order to extract convergent sequences of such elements.