The well-posedness of the electric field integral equation for transient scattering from a perfectly conducting body

We consider the scattering of a transient electromagnetic field incident on a body with a smooth, perfectly conducting surface. A standard numerical m ethod for calculating the scattered field is to use a time dependent, surfa ce integral equation (called the electric held integral equation) to calcul ate the surface currents and charges induced by the incident field-these cu rrents and charges then yield the scattered fields by means of standard int egral representations (vector and scalar potentials). In this paper we show that the time-dependent electric field integral equation is well-posed in a suitable function space setting. We also investigate the behaviour of the solutions at large time. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.