Generalized eigenfunction expansion and singularity expansion methods for two-dimensional acoustic time-domain wave scattering problems

Time-domain wave scattering in an unbounded two-dimensional acoustic medium by sound-hard scatterers is considered. Two canonical geometries, namely a split-ring resonator (SRR) and an array of cylinders, are used to highlight the theory, which generalizes to arbitrary scatterer geometries. The problem is solved using the generalized eigenfunction expansion method (GEM), which expresses the time-domain solution in terms of the frequency-domain solutions. A discrete GEM is proposed to numerically approximate the time-domain solution. It relies on quadrature approximations of continuous integrals and can be thought of as a generalization of the discrete Fourier transform. The solution then takes a simple form in terms of direct matrix multiplications. In parallel to the GEM, the singularity expansion method (SEM) is also presented and applied to the two aforementioned geometries. It expands the time-domain solution over a discrete set of unforced, complex resonant modes of the scatterer. Although the coefficients of this expansion are divergent integrals, we introduce a method of regularizing them using analytic continuation. The results show that while the SEM is usually inaccurate at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>t</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , it converges rapidly to the GEM solution at all spatial points in the computational domain, with the most rapid convergence occurring inside the resonant cavity.