Conformal PML-FDTD schemes for electromagnetic field simulations: a dynamic stability study

We present a study on the dynamic stability of the perfectly matched layer (PML) absorbing boundary condition for finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations of electromagnetic radiation and scattering problems in body-conformal orthogonal grids. This work extends a previous dynamic stability analysis of Cartesian, cylindrical and spherical PMLs to the case of a conformal PML. It is shown that the conformal PML defined over surface terminations with positive local radii of curvature (concave surfaces as viewed from inside the computational domain) is dynamically stable, while the conformal PML defined over surface terminations with a negative local radius (convex surfaces as viewed from inside the computational domain) is dynamically unstable. Numerical results illustrate the analysis.