Article Contents
Article Contents

# Spectral approximation of the curl operator in multiply connected domains

• A numerical scheme based on Nédélec finite elements has been recently introduced to solve the eigenvalue problem for the curl operator in simply connected domains. This topological assumption is not just a technicality, since the eigenvalue problem is ill-posed on multiply connected domains, in the sense that its spectrum is the whole complex plane. However, additional constraints can be added to the eigenvalue problem in order to recover a well-posed problem with a discrete spectrum. Vanishing circulations on each non-bounding cycle in the complement of the domain have been chosen as additional constraints in this paper. A mixed weak formulation including a Lagrange multiplier (that turns out to vanish) is introduced and shown to be well-posed. This formulation is discretized by Nédélec elements, while standard finite elements are used for the Lagrange multiplier. Spectral convergence is proved as well as a priori error estimates. It is also shown how to implement this finite element discretization taking care of these additional constraints. Finally, a numerical test to assess the performance of the proposed methods is reported.
Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary: 65N25, 65N30; Secondary: 76M10, 78M10.

 Citation:

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