Numerical Methods for Maxwell Equations

The Maxwell equations describe the interaction of electric and magnetic fields. Important applications are electric machines such as transformers or motors, or electromagnetic waves radiated from antennas or transmitted in optical fibres. To compute the solutions of real life problems on complicated geometries, numerical methods are required. In this lecture we formulate the Maxwell equations, and discuss the finite element method to solve them. Involved topics are partial differential equations, variational formulations, edge elements, high order elements, preconditioning, a posteriori error estimates.