Suppression of dispersion in FDTD solutions of Maxwell's equations

Abstract

Yee's finite difference time-domain method is widely used for numerically solving Maxwell's equations. The Yee algorithm is numerically dispersive which limits its usefulness for modeling wide-band electromagnetic phenomena. In this paper, we describe the use of flux-corrected transport for suppressing the numerical dispersion associated with the Yee algorithm. Flux-corrected transport uses the computed results from a numerically dispersive finite-difference algorithm and a numerically diffusive finite-difference algorithm at each time step to arrive at a final solution. In this case, the dispersive algorithm used is the original Yee FDTD method. Results are given comparing the accuracy of the FDTD algorithm with flux-corrected transport versus the unmodified Yee algorithm for propagating pulsed-type plane waves in two dimensional scattering problems.