An exploration of the integrated field equations method for maxwell's equations

This paper presents a survey and a number of experiments with the (relatively new) Integrated Field Equations method for Maxwell's equations. It starts out with a summary of the method, followed by a number of test cases in which its special properties, in particular its ability to handle high contrast using coarse grids is demonstrated. The method gives rise to a rather special set of equations and new strategies to solve these are presented as well, in particular the use of hierarchical semi-separable representations either in a direct solver or through a Krylov iteration strategy. New in the paper are the time-domain integration version of the method and the solution strategies.