A finite element method for approximating the time-harmonic Maxwell equations (Q1195901)

We study the use of \textit{J. Nédélec's} curl conforming finite elements [ibid. 39, 97-112 (1982; Zbl 0488.76038)] to approximate the time-harmonic Maxwell equations on a bounded domain. The analysis is complicated by the fact that the bilinear form is not coercive, and the principle part has a very large null-space. This difficulty is circumvented by using a discrete Helmholtz decomposition of the error vector. Numerical results are presented that compare two different linear elements.