A wave automaton for Maxwell's equations

This paper presents an extension to electromagnetic fields of the wave automaton, which was introduced in recent years for describing wave propagation in inhomogeneous media. Using elementary processes obeying a discrete Huygens' principle and satisfying fundamental symmetries such as time reversal and reciprocity, this new wave automaton is capable of modeling Maxwell's equations in 3+1 dimensions. It supplements the methods that were developed early for scalar and spinor fields. Received 19 July 2001