Introduction and Overview

Abstract

The analysis of electromagnetic radiation is an important resource to investigate the properties of materials. Often, unknown materials are irradiated by a suitable light source, e.g. a laser, and the scattered electric and magnetic fields are used to obtain information about the materials. This requires to link the properties of the incident to the scattered radiation. This asks to solve Maxwell’s equations with spatially distributed materials whose properties are introduced on phenomenological grounds. A prototypical example for such approach is ellipsometry. When designing e.g. antennas, the opposite is of relevance: An incident and scattered electromagnetic field is given and the structure, which produces this field, shall be constructed.