Boundedness of Left Half-Plane Eigenvalues for Non-Selfadjoint Indefinite Sturm--Liouville Problems with Applications to Fourier Modal Methods
For researchers using Fourier modal methods in computational electromagnetics, this offers a simple criterion to detect and avoid spurious modes that cause numerical instability.
The authors prove that for a general class of non-selfadjoint indefinite Sturm-Liouville problems, all eigenvalues in the open left half-plane are bounded, implying finiteness. This provides a rigorous criterion to identify non-physical spurious modes in low-loss metallic gratings, a known instability in Fourier modal methods.
We study a general class of non-selfadjoint indefinite Sturm--Liouville problems of the form $$ -(p\,y')' + q\,y = λ\, p\, y, $$ on a finite interval with complex-valued coefficients, where $p$ is piecewise in $W^{2,\infty}$, non-vanishing, and satisfies a non-degenerate interface condition, and $q$ is bounded. We prove that all eigenvalues in the open left half-plane are contained in a bounded set, which, by classical Sturm--Liouville theory, implies their finiteness. A prominent instance of this class arises in the lamellar grating diffraction problem with transverse-magnetic (TM) polarization, where $p=ε(x)^{-1}$ is the inverse of a spatially varying permittivity profile. Our result provides a simple and rigorous criterion for identifying non-physical spurious modes in low-loss metallic gratings -- a notorious source of instability in Fourier modal methods. Numerical examples illustrate the practical utility of the criterion.