Mathematical foundations of computational electromagnetism (Q1679999)

This remarkable monograph is devoted to the study of some problems in electrodynamics investigated by the authors. The main contribution of the authors is their ability to present the problems in an appropriate form for their practical solution. The book consists of ten chapters. Chapter 1 presents the physics framework of electromagnetism, in relation to the Maxwell equations and some related approximations. Chapter 2 is entitled ``Basic applied functional analysis''. The authors recall a number of definitions and results on Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces. Then, they introduce more specialized Sobolev spaces, which are better suited to measuring solutions to the divergence and the rotation of fields. In Chapter 3, the authors complement the classic results of the previous chapter. First, they review some recent results on the traces of vector fields -- especially the tangential trace of electromagnetic-like fields. Then, they focus on the extraction of potentials of rot-free and /or divergence-free fields. In Chapter 4, the known definitions and results from the theory of Banach and Hilbert spaces are given. Chapter 5 is devoted to establishing mathematical properties concerning the electromagnetic fields that are governed by the time-dependent Maxwell equations. They focus on uniqueness, existence, continuous dependence with respect to the data and regularity in terms of Sobolev spaces. In Chapter 6, the authors study the approximate models derived from Maxwell equations. They investigate the models from Chapter 1 and rely on the mathematical tools introduced in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 7 is devoted to an alternative, second-order formulation of the Maxwell's equations. The authors think that this new formulation is especially relevant for computational applications, as it admits several variational formulations, which can be simulated by versatile finite element methods. In Chapter 8, the time-harmonic Maxwell equations are studied. They derive from the time-dependent equations by assuming that the time dependence of the data and fields is proportional to $e^{-j\omega t}$, where $\omega\geq0$ is the circular frequency. When $\omega\geq0$ is unknown, then the time-harmonic problem becomes a free vibration problem of the electromagnetic field. One has to solve an eigenvalue problem, for which both the fields and circular frequency are unknown. One can refer to this problem as a Helmholtz-like problem, for which the only unknown are the fields. In Chapter 9, the authors consider some special cases in which the three-dimensional Maxwell equations can be reformulated as two-dimensional models. In this case, the computational domain boils down to a subset of $\mathbb R^2$, with respect to a suitable coordinate system. In Chapter 10, the authors investigate the coupled models from Section 1.3, namely, the Vlasov-Poisson system, the Vlasov-Maxwell system and the magneto-hydrodynamics system. The variety of existence and uniqueness results for several types of solution are presented. The monograph ends with an index of function spaces and references. In conclusion, it can be said that the monograph provides useful mathematical tools for investigations of some problems for electromagnetic fields and their computational realizations.