Nonreflecting boundary conditions for Maxwell's equations (Q1387877)

The authors derive exact nonreflecting boundary conditions for the time dependent Maxwell equations in three dimensions. The conditions hold on a spherical surface. Outside of this surface the medium is assumed to be homogeneous, isotropic and source-free. The conditions are local in time and nonlocal on the spherical surface and do not involve high-order derivatives. The authors show how to incorporate the conditions into finite difference or finite element methods. Numerical results are also presented in order to demonstrate the high accuracy of the boundary conditions.