Nonlocal $H$-convergence for topologically nontrivial domains

TL;DR

This paper extends nonlocal $H$-convergence to domains with complex topology, demonstrating conditions under which the topology is well-defined and applying it to homogenization and Maxwell problems.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized nonlocal $H$-convergence framework for topologically nontrivial domains, clarifies conditions for its uniqueness, and applies it to homogenization and Maxwell equations.

Findings

In domains with Maxwell's compactness property, the nonlocal $H$-convergence topology is well-defined and unambiguous.

On multiplication operators, the nonlocal $H$-topology matches the local $H$-convergence topology by Murat and Tartar.

The topology facilitates homogenization results and a new compactness criterion for nonlinear static Maxwell problems.

Abstract

The notion of nonlocal $H$-convergence is extended to domains with nontrivial topology, that is, domains with non-vanishing harmonic Dirichlet and/or Neumann fields. If the space of harmonic Dirichlet (or Neumann) fields is infinite-dimensional, there is an abundance of choice of pairwise incomparable topologies generalising the one for topologically trivial $\Omega$. It will be demonstrated that if the domain satisfies the Maxwell's compactness property the corresponding natural version of the corresponding (generalised) nonlocal $H$-convergence topology has no such ambiguity. Moreover, on multiplication operators the nonlocal $H$-topology coincides with the one induced by (local) $H$-convergence introduced by Murat and Tartar. The topology is used to obtain nonlocal homogenisation results including convergence of the associated energy for electrostatics. The derived techniques prove useful to deduce a new compactness criterion relevant for nonlinear static Maxwell problems.