Copyright © 2011 Peng Li and Weizhou Zhong. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The inverse fundamental operator marching method (IFOMM) is suggested to solve Cauchy problems associated with the Helmholtz equation in stratified waveguides. It is observed that the method for large-scale Cauchy problems is computationally efficient, highly accurate, and stable with respect to the noise in the data for the propagating part of a starting field. In further, the application scope of the IFOMM is discussed through providing an error estimation for the method. The estimation indicates that the IFOMM particularly suits to compute wave propagation in long-range and slowly varying stratified waveguides.