A New Look at the Stability Analysis of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method

The stability analysis of a numerical time-domain method plays a crucial role in well understanding the numerical behavior of the algorithm. The stability analysis should therefore be investigated in all senses. In this work, a new look at the stability analysis of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method is given. A novel link is constructed between the numerical-dispersion analysis and the stability analysis by using the sampled values of the unit space and time steps. Unification of these two analyses therefore becomes possible. The stability criterion is extracted in a simple way, and the amplification factor is formulated. The theoretical findings are tested via a numerical experiment. Some open problems in this area are also discussed.