arXiv subjects

Maxence Cassier

Publications and source records attributed to Maxence Cassier.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Broadband quasistatic passive cloaking: bounds and limitations in the near-field regime

We consider here several aspects of the following challenging question: is it possible to use a passive cloak to make invisible a dielectric inclusion on a finite frequency interval in the quasistatic regime of Maxwell's equations for an observer close to the object? In this work, by considering the Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) map, we not only answer negatively this question, but we go further and provide some quantitative bounds on this map that provide fundamental limits to both cloaking as well as approximate cloaking. These bounds involve the following physical parameters: the length and center of the frequency interval, the volume of the cloaking device, the volume of the obstacle, and the relative permittivity of the object. Our approach is based on two key tools: i) variational principles from the abstract theory of composites and ii) the analytic approach to deriving bounds from sum rules for passive systems. To use i), we prove a new representation theorem for the DtN map which allows us to interpret this map as an effective operator in the abstract theory of composites. One important consequence of this representation is that it allows one to incorporate the broad and deep results from the theory of composites, such as variational principles, and to apply the bounds derived from them to the DtN map. These results could be useful in other contexts other than cloaking. Next, to use ii), we show that the passivity assumption allows us to connect the DtN map (as function of the frequency) with two important classes of analytic functions, namely, Herglotz and Stieltjes functions. The sum rules for these functions, combined with the variational approach, allows us to derive new inequalities on the DtN map which impose fundamental limitations on passive cloaking, both exact and approximate, over a frequency interval. We consider both cases of lossy and lossless cloaks.

math-ph↗

arXiv2025

Geometric spectral properties of electromagnetic waveguides

Consider a reference homogeneous and isotropic electromagnetic waveguide with a simply connected cross-section embedded in a perfect conductor. In this setting, when the waveguide is straight, the spectrum of the associated self-adjoint Maxwell operator with a constant twist (which may be zero) lies on the real line and is symmetric with respect to zero and exhibits a spectral gap around the origin. Moreover, the spectrum is purely essential, and contains 0 which is an eigenvalue of infinite multiplicity. In this work, we present new results on the effects of geometric deformations, specifically bending and twisting, on the spectrum of the Maxwell operator. More precisely, we provide, on the one hand, sufficient conditions on the asymptotic behavior of curvature and twist that ensure the preservation of the essential spectrum of the reference waveguide. Our approach relies on a Birman-Schwinger-type principle, which may be of independent interest and applicable in other contexts. On the other hand, we give sufficient conditions (involving in particular the geometrical shape of the cross-section of the waveguide) so that the geometrical deformation creates discrete spectrum (namely isolated eigenvalues of finite multiplicity) within the gap of the essential spectrum. In addition, we give some results on the localization of these discrete eigenvalues. The sufficient condition involving the cross-section is then studied both analytically and numerically. Finally, we examine its stability under shape deformations of the cross-section, focusing in particular on the case of a waveguide with a rectangular cross-section.

math.AP↗

arXiv2025

An operator approach to the analysis of electromagnetic wave propagation in dispersive media. Part 2: transmission problems

In this second chapter, we analyse transmission problems between a dielectric and a dispersive negative material. In the first part, we consider a transmission problem between two half-spaces, filled respectively by the vacuum and a Drude material, and separated by a planar interface. In this setting, we answer to the following question: does this medium satisfy a limiting amplitude principle? This principle defines the stationary regime as the large time asymptotic behavior of a system subject to a periodic excitation. In the second part, we consider the transmission problem of an infinite strip of Drude material embedded in the vacuum and analyse the existence and dispersive properties of guided waves. In both problems, our spectral analysis enlighten new and unusual physical phenomena for the considered transmission problems due to the presence of the dispersive negative material. In particular, we prove the existence of an interface resonance in the first part and the existence of slow light phenomena for guiding waves in the second part.

math-ph↗

arXiv2025

An operator approach to the analysis of electromagnetic wave propagation in dispersive media. Part 1: general results

We investigate in this chapter the mathematical models for electromagnetic wave propagation in dispersive isotropic passive linear media for which the dielectric permittivity $\varepsilon$ and magnetic permeability $\mu$ depend on the frequency. We emphasize the link between physical requirements and mathematical properties of the models. A particular attention is devoted to the notions of causality and passivity and its connection to the existence of Herglotz functions that determine the dispersion of the material. We consider successively the cases of the general passive media and the so-called local media for which $\varepsilon$ and $\mu$ are rational functions of the frequency. This leads us to analyse the important class of non dissipative and dissipative generalized Lorentz models. In particular, we discuss the connection between mathematical and physical properties of models through the notions of stability, energy conservation, dispersion and modal analyses, group and phase velocities and energy decay in dissipative systems.

math-ph↗

arXiv2023

Long time behaviour of the solution of Maxwell's equations in dissipative generalized Lorentz materials (II) A modal approach

This work concerns the analysis of electromagnetic dispersive media modelled by generalized Lorentz models. More precisely, this paper is the second of two articles dedicated to the long time behaviour of solutions of Maxwell's equations in dissipative Lorentz media, via the long time decay rate of the electromagnetic energy for the corresponding Cauchy problem. In opposition to the frequency dependent Lyapunov functions approach used in [Cassier, Joly, Rosas Mart\'inez, Z. Angew. Math. Phys. 74 (2023), 115], we develop a method based on the spectral analysis of the underlying non-self-adjoint operator of the model. Although more involved, this approach is closer to physics, as it uses the dispersion relation of the model, and has the advantage to provide more precise and more optimal results, leading to distinguish the notion of weak and strong dissipation.

math-ph↗

arXiv2022

Long time behaviour of the solution of Maxwell's equations in dissipative generalized Lorentz materials (I) A frequency dependent Lyapunov function approach

It is well-known that electromagnetic dispersive structures such as metamaterials can be modelled by generalized Drude-Lorentz models. The present paper is the first of two articles dedicated to dissipative generalized Drude-Lorentz open structures. We wish to quantify the loss in such media in terms of the long time decay rate of the electromagnetic energy for the corresponding Cauchy problem. By using an approach based on frequency dependent Lyapounov estimates, we show that this decay is polynomial in time. These results extend to an unbounded structure the ones obtained for bounded media in [18] via a quite different method based on the notion of cumulated past history and semi-group theory. A great advantage of the approach developed here is to be less abstract and directly connected to the physics of the system via energy balances.

math.AP↗

arXiv2022

Active exterior cloaking for the 2D Helmholtz equation with complex wavenumbers and application to thermal cloaking

We design sources for the two-dimensional Helmholtz equation that can cloak an object by cancelling out the incident field in a region, without the sources completely surrounding the object to hide. As in previous work for real positive wavenumbers, the sources are also determined by the Green identities. The novelty is that we prove that the same approach works for complex wavenumbers which makes it applicable to a variety of media, including media with dispersion, loss and gain. Furthermore, by deriving bounds on Graf's addition formulas with complex arguments, we obtain new estimates that allow to quantify the quality of the cloaking effect. We illustrate our results by applying them to achieve active exterior cloaking for the heat equation.

math.AP↗

arXiv2021

High contrast elliptic operators in honeycomb structures

We study the band structure of self-adjoint elliptic operators $\mathbb{A}_g= -\nabla \cdot σ_{g} \nabla$, where $σ_g$ has the symmetries of a honeycomb tiling of $\mathbb{R}^2$. We focus on the case where $σ_{g}$ is a real-valued scalar: $σ_{g}=1$ within identical, disjoint "inclusions", centered at vertices of a honeycomb lattice, and $σ_{g}=g \gg1 $ (high contrast) in the complement of the inclusion set (bulk). Such operators govern, e.g. transverse electric (TE) modes in photonic crystal media consisting of high dielectric constant inclusions (semi-conductor pillars) within a homogeneous lower contrast bulk (air), a configuration used in many physical studies. Our approach, which is based on monotonicity properties of the associated energy form, extends to a class of high contrast elliptic operators that model heterogeneous and anisotropic honeycomb media. Our results concern the global behavior of dispersion surfaces, and the existence of conical crossings (Dirac points) occurring in the lowest two energy bands as well as in bands arbitrarily high in the spectrum. Dirac points are the source of important phenomena in fundamental and applied physics, e.g. graphene and its artificial analogues, and topological insulators. The key hypotheses are the non-vanishing of the Dirac (Fermi) velocity $v_D(g)$, verified numerically, and a spectral isolation condition, verified analytically in many configurations. Asymptotic expansions, to any order in $g^{-1}$, of Dirac point eigenpairs and $v_D(g)$ are derived with error bounds. Our study illuminates differences between the high contrast behavior of $\mathbb{A}_g$ and the corresponding strong binding regime for Schroedinger operators.

math-ph↗

arXiv2021

Spectral theory for Maxwell's equations at the interface of a metamaterial. Part II: Limiting absorption, limiting amplitude principles and interface resonance

This paper is concerned with the time-dependent Maxwell's equations for a plane interface between a negative material described by the Drude model and the vacuum, which fill, respectively, two complementary half-spaces. In a first paper, we have constructed a generalized Fourier transform which diagonalizes the Hamiltonian that represents the propagation of transverse electric waves. In this second paper, we use this transform to prove the limiting absorption and limiting amplitude principles, which concern, respectively, the behavior of the resolvent near the continuous spectrum and the long time response of the medium to a time-harmonic source of prescribed frequency. This paper also underlines the existence of an interface resonance which occurs when there exists a particular frequency characterized by a ratio of permittivities and permeabilities equal to $-1$ across the interface. At this frequency, the response of the system to a harmonic forcing term blows up linearly in time. Such a resonance is unusual for wave problem in unbounded domains and corresponds to a non-zero embedded eigenvalue of infinite multiplicity of the underlying operator. This is the time counterpart of the ill-posdness of the corresponding harmonic problem.

math.AP↗

arXiv2020

Active Thermal Cloaking and Mimicking

We present an active cloaking method for the parabolic heat (and mass or light diffusion) equation that can hide both objects and sources. By active we mean that it relies on designing monopole and dipole heat source distributions on the boundary of the region to be cloaked. The same technique can be used to make a source or an object look like a different one to an observer outside the cloaked region, from the perspective of thermal measurements. Our results assume a homogeneous isotropic bulk medium and require knowledge of the source to cloak or mimic, but are in most cases independent of the object to cloak.

math.AP↗

arXiv2018

Electromagnetic waves in photonic crystals: laws of dispersion, causality and analytical properties

Photonic crystals are periodic structures which prevent light propagation along one or more directions in certain frequency intervals. Their band spectrum is usually analyzed using Floquet-Bloch decomposition. This spectrum is located on the real axis, and it enters the complex plane when absorption and dispersion is considered in the dielectric permittivity of material constituents. Here, we review fundamental definition and properties of dispersion law and group velocity in photonic crystals and we illustrate them with numerical examples.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2018

Imaging small polarizable scatterers with polarization data

We present a method for imaging small scatterers in a homogeneous medium from polarization measurements of the electric field at an array. The electric field comes from illuminating the scatterers with a point source with known location and polarization. We view this problem as a generalized phase retrieval problem with data being the coherency matrix or Stokes parameters of the electric field at the array. We introduce a simple preprocessing of the coherency matrix data that partially recovers the ideal data where all the components of the electric field are known for different source dipole moments. We prove that the images obtained using an electromagnetic version of Kirchhoff migration applied to the partial data are, for high frequencies, asymptotically identical to the images obtained from ideal data. We analyze the image resolution and show that polarizability tensor components in an appropriate basis can be recovered from the Kirchhoff images, which are tensor fields. A time domain interpretation of this imaging problem is provided and numerical experiments are used to illustrate the theory.

math.NA↗

arXiv2017

Mathematical models for dispersive electromagnetic waves: an overview

In this work, we investigate mathematical models for electromagnetic wave propagation in dispersive isotropic media. We emphasize the link between physical requirements and mathematical properties of the models. A particular attention is devoted to the notion of non-dissipativity and passivity. We consider successively the case of so-called local media and general passive media. The models are studied through energy techniques, spectral theory and dispersion analysis of plane waves. For making the article self-contained, we provide in appendix some useful mathematical background.

math.AP↗

arXiv2017

Imaging polarizable dipoles

We present a method for imaging the polarization vector of an electric dipole distribution in a homogeneous medium from measurements of the electric field made at a passive array. We study an electromagnetic version of Kirchhoff imaging and prove, in the Fraunhofer asymptotic regime, that range and cross-range resolution estimates are identical to those in acoustics. Our asymptotic analysis provides error estimates for the cross-range dipole orientation reconstruction and shows that the range component of the dipole orientation is lost in this regime. A naive generalization of the Kirchhoff imaging function is afflicted by oscillatory artifacts in range, that we characterize and correct. We also consider the active imaging problem which consists in imaging both the position and polarizability tensors of small scatterers in the medium using an array of collocated sources and receivers. As in the passive array case, we provide resolution estimates that are consistent with the acoustic case and give error estimates for the cross-range entries of the polarizability tensor. Our theoretical results are illustrated by numerical experiments.

math.NA↗

arXiv2016

Bounds on Herglotz functions and fundamental limits of broadband passive quasi-static cloaking

Using a sum rule, we derive new bounds on Herglotz functions that generalize those given in (Gustafson and Sjöberg 2010) and (Bernland, Luger and Gustafson 2011). These bounds apply to a wide class of linear passive systems such as electromagnetic passive materials. Among these bounds, we describe the optimal ones and also discuss their meaning in various physical situations like in the case of a transparency window, where we exhibit sharp bounds. Then, we apply these bounds in the context of broadband passive cloaking in the quasi-static regime to negatively answer the following challenging question: is it possible to construct a passive cloaking device that cloaks an object over a whole frequency band? Our rigorous approach, although limited to quasi-statics, gives quantitative limitations on the cloaking effect over a finite frequency range by providing inequalities on the polarizabilty tensor associated with the cloaking device. We emphasize that our results hold for a cloak or object of any geometrical shape.

math-ph↗

arXiv2016

Spectral theory for Maxwell's equations at the interface of a metamaterial. Part I: Generalized Fourier transform

We explore the spectral properties of the time-dependent Maxwell's equations for a plane interface between a metamaterial represented by the Drude model and the vacuum, which fill respectively complementary half-spaces. We construct explicitly a generalized Fourier transform which diagonalizes the Hamiltonian that describes the propagation of transverse electric waves. This transform appears as an operator of decomposition on a family of generalized eigenfunctions of the problem. It will be used in a forthcoming paper to prove both limiting absorption and limiting amplitude principles.

math.AP↗

arXiv2016

Analyticity of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map for the time-harmonic Maxwell's equations

In this chapter of the book entitled, "Extending the Theory of Composites to Other Areas of Science" [edited by Graeme W. Milton, 2016] we derive the analyticity properties of the electromagnetic Dirichlet-to-Neumann map for the time-harmonic Maxwell's equations for passive linear multicomponent media. Moreover, we discuss the connection of this map to Herglotz functions for isotropic and anisotropic multicomponent composites.

math.AP↗

arXiv2016

A rigorous approach to the field recursion method for two-component composites with isotropic phases

In this chapter of the book entitled, "Extending the Theory of Composites to Other Areas of Science" [edited by Graeme W. Milton, 2016] we give a rigorous derivation of the field equation recursion method in the abstract theory of composites to two-component composites with isotropic phases. This method is of great interest since it has proven to be a powerful tool in developing sharp bounds for the effective tensor of a composite material. The reason is that the effective tensor $\bf L_*$ can be interpreted in the general framework of the abstract theory of composites as the $Z$-operator on a certain orthogonal $Z(2)$ subspace collection. The base case of the recursion starts with an orthogonal $Z(2)$ subspace collection on a Hilbert space $\cal H$, the $Z$-problem, and the associated $Y$-problem. We provide some new conditions for the solvability of both the $Z$-problem and the associated $Y$-problem. We also give explicit representations of the associated $Z$-operator and $Y$-operator and study their analytical properties. An iteration method is then developed from a hierarchy of subspace collections and their associated operators which leads to a continued fraction representation of the initial effective tensor $\bf L_*$.

math-ph↗