Umeå University's logo

For analytic operator functions, we prove accumulation of branches of complex eigenvalues to the essential spectrum. Moreover, we show minimality and completeness of the corresponding system of eigenvectors and associated vectors. These results are used to prove sufficient conditions for eigenvalue accumulation to the poles and to infinity of rational operator functions. Finally, an application of electromagnetic field theory is given.

We present an efficient procedure for computing resonances and resonant modes of Helmholtz problems posed in exterior domains. The problem is formulated as a nonlinear eigenvalue problem (NEP), where the nonlinearity arises from the use of a Dirichlet-to-Neumann map, which accounts for modeling unbounded domains. We consider a variational formulation and show that the spectrum consists of isolated eigenvalues of finite multiplicity that only can accumulate at infinity. The proposed method is based on a high order finite element discretization combined with a specialization of the Tensor Infinite Arnoldi method (TIAR). Using Toeplitz matrices, we show how to specialize this method to our specific structure. In particular we introduce a pole cancellation technique in order to increase the radius of convergence for computation of eigenvalues that lie close to the poles of the matrix-valued function. The solution scheme can be applied to multiple resonators with a varying refractive index that is not necessarily piecewise constant. We present two test cases to show stability, performance and numerical accuracy of the method. In particular the use of a high order finite element discretization together with TIAR results in an efficient and reliable method to compute resonances.

This article reviews both recent progress on the mathematics of dispersive and absorptive photonic crystals and well-established results on conservative photonic crystals. The focus is on properties of the photonic band structures and we also provide results that are of importance for the understanding of lossy metal-dielectric photonic crystals.

In this paper we introduce an enclosure of the numerical range of a class of rational operator functions. In contrast to the numerical range the presented enclosure can be computed exactly in the infinite dimensional case as well as in the finite dimensional case. Moreover, the new enclosure is minimal given only the numerical ranges of the operator coefficients and many characteristics of the numerical range can be obtained by investigating the enclosure. We introduce a pseudonumerical range and study an enclosure of this set. This enclosure provides a computable upper bound of the norm of the resolvent.

In this paper we present equivalence results for several types of unbounded operator functions. A generalization of the concept equivalence after extension is introduced and used to prove equivalence and linearization for classes of unbounded operator functions. Further, we deduce methods of finding equivalences to operator matrix functions that utilizes equivalences of the entries. Finally, a method of finding equivalences and linearizations to a general case of operator matrix polynomials is presented.

In this paper, we discuss problems arising when computing resonances with a finite element method. In the pre-asymptotic regime, we detect for the one dimensional case, spurious solutions in finite element computations of resonances when the computational domain is truncated with a perfectly matched layer (PML) as well as with a Dirichlet-to-Neumann map (DtN). The new test is based on the Lippmann–Schwinger equation and we use computations of the pseudospectrum to show that this is a suitable choice. Numerical simulations indicate that the presented test can distinguish between spurious eigenvalues and true eigenvalues also in difficult cases.

We establish new analytic results for a general class of rational spectral problems. They arise e.g. in modelling photonic crystals whose capability to control the flow of light depends on specific features of the eigenvalues. Our results comprise a complete spectral analysis including variational principles and two-sided bounds for all eigenvalues, as well as numerical implementations. They apply to the eigenvalues between the poles where classical variational principles fail completely. In the application to multi-pole Lorentz models of permittivity functions we show, in particular, that our abstract two-sided eigenvalue estimates are optimal and we derive explicit bounds on the band gap above a Lorentz pole. A high order finite element method (FEM) is used to compute the two-sided bounds for a selection of eigenvalues for several concrete Lorentz models, e.g. polaritonic materials and multi-pole models.

We present a-posteriori analysis of higher order finite element approximations (hp-FEM) for quadratic Fredholm-valued operator functions. Residual estimates for approximations of the algebraic eigenspaces are derived and we reduce the analysis of the estimator to the analysis of an associated boundary value problem. For the reasons of robustness we also consider approximations of the associated invariant pairs. We show that our estimator inherits the efficiency and reliability properties of the underlying boundary value estimator. As a model problem we consider spectral problems arising in analysis of photonic crystals. In particular, we present an example where a targeted family of eigenvalues cannot be guaranteed to be semisimple. Numerical experiments with hp-FEM show the predicted convergence rates. The measured effectivities of the estimator compare favorably with the performance of the same estimator on the associated boundary value problem. We also present a benchmark estimator, based on the dual weighted residual (DWR) approach, which is more expensive to compute but whose measured effectivities are close to one. 

We present an algorithm for approximating an eigensubspace of a spectral component of an analytic Fredholm valued function. Our approach is based on numerical contour integration and the analytic Fredholm theorem. The presented method can be seen as a variant of the FEAST algorithm for infinite dimensional nonlinear eigenvalue problems. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of the algorithm for polynomial and rational eigenvalue problems.

Metallic nano-antennas are devices used to concentrate the energy in light into regions that are much smaller than the wavelength. These structures are currently used to develop new measurement and printing techniques, such as optical microscopy with sub-wavelength resolution, and high-resolution lithography. Here, we analyze and design a nano-antenna in a two-dimensional setting with the source being a planar TE-polarized wave. The design problem is to place silver and air in a pre-specified design region to maximize the electric energy in a small given target region. At optical frequencies silver exhibits extreme dielectric properties, having permittivity with a negative real part. We prove existence and uniqueness of solutions to the governing nonstandard Helmholtz equation with absorbing boundary conditions. To solve the design optimization problem, we develop a two-stage procedure. The first stage uses a material distribution parameterization and aims at finding a conceptual design without imposing any a priori information about the number of shapes of components comprising the nano-antenna. The second design stage uses a domain variation approach and aims at finding a precise shape. Both of the above design problems are formulated as non-linear mathematical programming problems that are solved using the method of moving asymptotes. The final designs perform very well and the electric energy in the target region is several orders of magnitude larger than when there is only air in the design region. The performance of the optimized designs is verified with a high order interior penalty method.