Spectral approximation of quadratic operator polynomials arising in photonic band structure calculations (Q2454030)

This work studies the Galerkin spectral approximation theory of non-self-adjoint quadratic operator polynomials with periodic coefficients in variational formulation. The non-self-adjoint problem arises from complex band structure evaluations in metallic photonic crystals, periodic waveguides, and metamaterials. The spectrum of the non-self-adjoint operator polynomials associated with lossy materials is shown by Fredholm theory to have at most countably many isolated eigenvalues of finite multiplicity with a nonzero imaginary part. The original operator polynomial is represented by an equivalent non-compact block operator, which is projected onto a finite-dimensional space. As the projection operator does not converge strongly, a special approximation is constructed in a way that has the same eigenvalues and generalized eigenvectors as the projection operator but converges to the original linear non-compact operator strongly. Then existing spectral approximation theory for non-selfadjoint operators is applied for the approximate operator. The \(p\)- and \(h\)-versions of finite element methods are used for the discretization of the block operator matrix, and their convergence rates are established and confirmed by numerical experiments.