Adjoint Based Sampling Methods for Electromagnetic Scattering

In this paper we investigate the efficient realization of sampling methods, based on solutions of certain adjoint problems. This adjoint approach does not require the explicit knowledge of a Green’s function for the background medium, and allows to sample for all points and all dipole directions simultaneously; thus several limitations of standard sampling methods are relieved. A detailed derivation of the adjoint approach is presented for two electromagnetic model problems, but the framework can be applied to a much wider class of problems. We also discuss a relation of the adjoint sampling method to standard backprojection algorithms, and present numerical tests that illustrate the efficiency of the adjoint approach.