Abstract

We study a transmission problem for the time harmonic Maxwell equations between a classical positive material and a so-called negative index material in which both the permittivity $𝜀$ and the permeability $\mu$ take negative values. Additionally, we assume that the interface between the two domains is smooth everywhere except at a point where it coincides locally with a conical tip. In this context, it is known that for certain critical values of the contrasts in $𝜀$ and in $\mu$, the corresponding scalar operators are not of Fredholm type in the usual ${H<!--FUNCTION\; APPLICATION-->}^1$ spaces. We show that in these situations the Maxwell equations are not well-posed in the classical $L^2$ framework due to existence of hypersingular fields which are of infinite energy at the tip. By combining the $T<!--FUNCTION\; APPLICATION-->$-coercivity approach and the Kondratiev theory, we explain how to construct new functional frameworks to recover well-posedness of the Maxwell problem. We also explain how to select the setting which is consistent with the limiting absorption principle. From a technical point of view, the fields as well as their curls decompose as the sum of an explicit singular part, related to the black hole singularities of the scalar operators, and a smooth part belonging to some weighted spaces. The analysis we propose rely in particular on the proof of new key results of scalar and vector potential representations of singular fields.

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