Spurious fields in time-domain computations of scattering problems

Two-dimensional (2-D) electromagnetic scattering problems with a time-periodic incident field are considered. The scatterer is a perfect conductor, and an artificial boundary condition is used. The large-time behavior of solutions, depending on (divergence-free) initial conditions, is characterized. It turns out that in addition to the expected time-periodic solution, the limiting solution may also contain a spurious stationary field. The source of the stationary field is explained and equations describing it are obtained. Several avoidance strategies are discussed and numerical comparisons of these techniques are given.