Two- and three-field formulations for wave transmission between media with opposite sign dielectric constants (Q883475)

Physical models describing the electromagnetic properties of some metamaterials, semiconductors near plasmon resonance, plasmas under cyclotron frequency and superconductors (according to London's phenomenologic approach) lead to negative dielectric constant \(\varepsilon\). In recent years metamaterials, modelled with simultaneously negative dielectric constant \(\varepsilon\) and magnetic permeability \(\mu\), have been thoroughly studied, due to their specific electromagnetic behaviour and their wide application range in modern electronics. For practical applications, it is therefore important to be able to capture numerically the electromagnetic field near interfaces between classical dielectric media \((\varepsilon> 0, \mu > 0)\), and superconductors \((\varepsilon < 0, \mu >0)\) or metamaterials \((\varepsilon < 0, \mu < 0)\). Mathematically however, due to the dielectric constant sign shift at the interface, the natural variational formulation of such problems is neither coercive nor coercive plus compact, so it does not seem possible to fit straightforwardly the model into a framework leading to a well-posed problem. In this paper authors focus on a simplified scalar model problem related to Maxwell equations, which involves similar interface discontinuities. Assume the domain is split in two parts \(\Omega_1\) and \(\Omega_2\), with dielectric constant called \(\varepsilon_1\), positive on \(\Omega_1\), and \(\varepsilon_2\) negative on \(\Omega_2\), and consider the following equation: \[ \text{div}\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\nabla u\right) + \omega^2\mu u=f. \] This simplified model problem has already been studied in the case of a piecewise constant \(\varepsilon\), such that \(\varepsilon_1\in R^{+}_{*}\) and \(\varepsilon_2\in R^{-}_{*}\). It has been shown, using integral equations, that for a smooth interface \(\Sigma=\partial\Omega_1\cap\partial\Omega_2\), the model problem fits into the Fredholm framework if the contrast \(\kappa := \varepsilon_1/\varepsilon_2\) is not equal to - 1. Using Dirichlet to Neumann operators, it has been also shown that the model fits into the Fredholm framework if \(| \kappa| \gg 1\) or \(| \kappa| \ll 1\) (no required regularity of the interface \(\Sigma\)). Since it is very hard to generalize integral equation methods in the case of a non-smooth interface geometry or in the case of non-constant \((\varepsilon_i)_{i=1,2}\), a variational approach is adopted here. Authors introduce two variational formulations allowing both a Lipschitz interface and variable \(\varepsilon_1\) and \(\varepsilon_2\). To that aim, they introduce a new unknown, which is equal to the gradient of \(u\) in one of the subdomains. The two-field formulation is valid for interfaces between superconductor and dielectric medium. The three-field formulation is more general: it is valid also for interfaces between metamaterial and dielectric medium, and further it allows to consider a vanishing frequency \(\omega\). For each formulation they derive conditions on \(\varepsilon\), \(\mu\) and on the geometry, ensuring that the considered formulation fits into the coercive plus compact framework. One of the main interests of these formulations is that they can be solved numerically with a standard finite element method. As is was mentioned above, the three-field formulation is more general, however it is also more expensive computationally.