A new inversion method for dissipating electromagnetic problem ∗

Abstract The paper suggests a new technique for solution of the inverse problem for Maxwell’s equations in a dissipating medium. Being non-self-adjoint, the problem generally requires computing an adjoint operator on each step of gradient descent minimization procedure. The suggested approach introduces a conjugation operator and develops a representation of the system of Maxwell’s equations based on iteratively updated eigenfunction expansion. Used in numerical scheme, the method effectively avoids calculation of the adjoint operator and reduces to the gradient minimization in a small number of descent directions.