Divergence preservation in the ADI algorithms for electromagnetics

TL;DR

This paper analyzes ADI algorithms for electromagnetics with sources, identifying which preserve divergence and ensuring stability, verified through computational simulations, and revealing relationships between divergence-preserving and non-preserving methods.

Contribution

It classifies four main ADI cases with respect to divergence preservation and demonstrates the stability of the divergence-preserving method through simulations.

Findings

Only one ADI case preserves divergence and guarantees stability.

Two cases are verified unstable through simulations.

A stable, non-divergence-preserving algorithm is related to the divergence-preserving one.

Abstract

This paper contains a study of ADI methods in the presence of charge and current sources. It is shown that there are four significantly distinct cases, with four more related by duality. Of those, only one preserves divergence and, thus, is guaranteed to be stable in the presence of moving charged particles. Computational verification of this property is accomplished by implementation in existing 3D-EMPIC simulation software. Of the other three cases, two are verified unstable, as expected, and one remains stable, despite the lack of divergence preservation. This other stable algorithm is shown to be related to the divergence preserving case by a similarity transformation, effectively providing the complement of the divergence preserving field in the finite-difference energy quantity.