A Reflectionless Discrete Perfectly Matched Layer
This solves the long-standing problem of numerical reflections in discretized PMLs for wave simulations, offering a practical and stable solution.
The paper presents a new discrete Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) for the scalar wave equation that eliminates numerical reflections entirely, achieving machine-zero truncation error with a moderately thick PML.
Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) is a widely adopted non-reflecting boundary treatment for wave simulations. Reducing numerical reflections from a discretized PML has been a long lasting challenge. This paper presents a new discrete PML for the multi-dimensional scalar wave equation which produces no numerical reflection at all. The reflectionless discrete PML is discovered through a straightforward derivation using Discrete Complex Analysis. The resulting PML takes an easily-implementable finite difference form with compact stencil. In practice, the discrete waves are damped exponentially in the PML, and the error due to domain truncation is maintained at machine zero by a moderately thick PML. The numerical stability of the proposed PML is also demonstrated.