Superconvergence of mixed finite element approximations to 3-D Maxwell’s equations in metamaterials

Numerical simulation of metamaterials has attracted more and more attention since 2000, after the first metamaterial with negative refraction index was successfully constructed. In this paper we construct a fully-discrete leap-frog type finite element scheme to solve the three-dimensional time-dependent Maxwell’s equations when metamaterials are involved. First, we obtain some superclose results between the interpolations of the analytical solutions and finite element solutions obtained using arbitrary orders of Raviart–Thomas–Nédélec mixed spaces on regular cubic meshes. Then we prove the superconvergence result in the discrete l2 norm achieved for the lowest-order Raviart–Thomas–Nédélec space. To our best knowledge, such superconvergence results have never been obtained elsewhere. Finally, we implement the leap-frog scheme and present numerical results justifying our theoretical analysis.