Computational Electromagnetics (CEM) is the technology modeling the interaction of electromagnetic waves (EM waves) with physical objects and their surroundings. This technology has been demonstrated to be a key element in the design of, e.g., modern antennas, waveguiding/shaping devices, etc..It has been playing a pivotal role in forging modern communication systems, and therefore was, is and will be greatly impacting peoples’ daily life. However, despite of all these successes, very recent experiments on the interaction of light (EM waves at optical frequencies) with deep-nanoscale metallic structures suggest the need of a paradigm shift in the classic CEM algorithms, where a more refined material model is required. As the very first step in this direction, we combine the dynamics of classical EM waves with the semi-classical hydrodynamic motion of free electrons in metals. The problem is formulated in the framework of Boundary Integral Equations (BIEs) and subsequently solved by the Method of Moments (MoM) algorithm. This research contributes to potentially bridging the computational gap between the classical macroscopic world and the quantum mechanical microscopic world, and provides an essential tool for chemists and physicists to understand new physics in the nanoscopic world.

Guy A. E. Vandenbosch is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Leuven, Belgium. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from KU Leuven in 1985 and 1991, respectively.
He was a research and teaching assistant from 1985 to 1991 with the Telecommunications and Microwaves section of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, where he worked on the modeling of microstrip antennas with the integral equation technique.