An adaptive edge finite element DtN method for Maxwell’s equations in biperiodic structures

Abstract We consider the diffraction of an electromagnetic plane wave by a biperiodic structure. This paper is concerned with a numerical solution of the diffraction grating problem for three-dimensional Maxwell’s equations. Based on the Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) operator, an equivalent boundary value problem is formulated in a bounded domain by using a transparent boundary condition. An a posteriori error estimate-based adaptive edge finite element method is developed for the variational problem with the truncated DtN operator. The estimate takes account of both the finite element approximation error and the truncation error of the DtN operator, where the former is used for local mesh refinements and the latter is shown to decay exponentially with respect to the truncation parameter. Numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the competitive behaviour of the proposed method.