Numerical homogenization of time-dependent Maxwell's equations with dispersion effects

This thesis studies the propagation of electromagnetic waves in heterogeneous structures such as metamaterials. The governing equations for this problem are Maxwell's equations with highly oscillatory parameters. We use an analytic homogenization result which yields an effective Maxwell system that involves a convolution integral. This convolution represents dispersive effects that result from the interaction of the wave with the (locally) periodic microscopic structure.

We discretize in space using the Finite Element Heterogeneous Multiscale Method (FE-HMM) and provide a semi-discrete error estimate. The rigorous error analysis in space is supplemented by a rather standard time discretization at the end of which an efficient, fully discrete method is proposed. This method uses a recursive approximation of the convolution that relies on the assumption that the convolution kernel is an exponential function. Eventually, we present numerical experiments both for the microscopic and the macroscopic scale.