High-order nondissipative staggered schemes for Maxwell's equations

Higher-order schemes, although appealing from the phase error and accuracy points of view, have not been widely accepted by the engineering computational electromagnetics community. The wider spatial stencil of such methods does not allow for a straightforward implementation of the absorbing boundary conditions (ABC) needed to simulate the fact that the problem to be solved is embedded in free-space. We report the results related to the coupling of a PML-type (sometimes referred to as a sponge layer) ABC with staggered schemes using the test problem of a circular scatterer illuminated by a cylindrically spreading wave.