A superconvergent HDG method for the Maxwell equations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new HDG method for steady Maxwell equations that achieves superconvergence of the electric field without postprocessing, with proven stability and convergence rates independent of the Lagrange multiplier.

Contribution

The paper develops a superconvergent HDG method for Maxwell equations with a novel stabilization approach and proves its well-posedness and convergence properties.

Findings

Superconvergence of the electric field achieved without postprocessing.

Convergence rates for the electric field are $O(h^{k+2})$ under regularity assumptions.

Method is well-posed on both simplicial and polyhedral meshes.

Abstract

We present and analyze a new hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method for the steady state Maxwell equations. In order to make the problem well-posed, a condition of divergence is imposed on the electric field. Then a Lagrange multiplier $p$ is introduced, and the problem becomes the solution of a mixed curl-curl formulation of the Maxwell's problem. We use polynomials of degree $k+1$, $k$, $k$ to approximate $\bfu,\nabla \times \bfu$ and $p$ respectively. In contrast, we only use a non-trivial subspace of polynomials of degree $k+1$ to approximate the numerical tangential trace of the electric field and polynomials of degree $k+1$ to approximate the numerical trace of the Lagrange multiplier on the faces. On the simplicial meshes, a special choice of the stabilization parameters is applied, and the HDG system is shown to be well-posed. Moreover, we show that the convergence rates for $\boldsymbol{u}$ and $\nabla \times \boldsymbol{u}$ are independent of the Lagrange multiplier $p$. If we assume the dual operator of the Maxwell equation on the domain has adequate regularity, we show that the convergence rate for $\boldsymbol{u}$ is $O(h^{k+2})$. From the point of view of degrees of freedom of the globally coupled unknown: numerical trace, this HDG method achieves superconvergence for the electric field without postprocessing. Finally, we show that on general polyhedral elements, by a particular choice of the stabilization parameters again, the HDG system is also well-posed and the superconvergence of the HDG method is derived.