A FLAME Molecule for 3-D Electromagnetic Scattering

The flexible local approximation method has been shown to be an effective computational technique for solving problems involving large numbers of similar structures. To date, its application in 3-D has been limited to scalar problems. Here, it is extended to solve the equations of vector EM, as they apply to the scattering of plane waves by dielectric obstacles. Applied to a single sphere, the average error in the near field is less than 5% even when the sphere is just two grid cells across. There is good agreement with previously published results for the far field of two close spheres. The radar cross section of an arbitrary array of ten identical spheres is also computed.