On Spurious Resonant Modes in the MOT Solution of Time Domain EFIE

Theoretically, internal resonant modes should not be induced in the marching-on-in-time (MOT) solution of the time domain electric field integral equation since zero initial conditions are enforced at the beginning of time marching and the internal resonant modes do not satisfy these initial conditions. However, these spurious modes are always observed in the MOT solution. It has been conjectured in the past that numerical errors might establish the necessary initial conditions and allow the incident field to induce the internal resonant modes. Systematic numerical experiments carried out in this work prove this conjecture by demonstrating that the internal resonant modes' amplitudes are indeed dictated by the numerical errors and the spectrum of the incident field.