A hybrid finite/boundary element method for periodic structures on non-periodic meshes using an interior penalty formulation for Maxwell’s equations

This paper presents a hybrid finite element/boundary element (FEBE) method for periodic structures. Periodic structures have been efficiently analyzed by solving for a single unit cell utilizing Floquet’s theorem. However, most of the previous works require periodic meshes to properly impose the boundary conditions on the outer surfaces of the unit cell. To alleviate this restriction, the interior penalty method is adopted and implemented in this work. Also, the proper treatment of the boundary element part is addressed to account for the non-conformity of the boundary element mesh. Another ingredient of this work is the use of the efficient boundary element computation, accelerated by the Ewald transformation for the calculation of the periodic Green’s function. Finally, the method is validated through examples which are discretized without the constraint of a periodic mesh.