High order finite difference approximations of electromagnetic wave propagation close to material discontinuities (Q1403979)

The paper studies electromagnetic wave propagation close to material discontinuities corresponding to one or several layers of absorbing materials at the surface of the scattering object. The authors use high order finite difference methods that guarantee bounded error growth in time, and apply the technique developed in [\textit{J. Nordström} and \textit{M. H. Carpenter}, J. Comput. Phys. 173, 149-174 (2001 Zbl 0987.65081)]. They combine the energy method with a penalty formulation for the interface conditions. The numerical stability of the method is analyzed, and numerical experiments verify the order of accuracy.