Active manipulation of exterior electromagnetic fields by using surface sources

In this paper, we establish a scheme for the active manipulation of electromagnetic fields in prescribed exterior regions using a surface source. We prove the existence of the necessary surface current (electric or magnetic) on a single source to approximate prescribed electromagnetic fields on given regions of space (bounded or possibly the far field). We provide two constructive schemes for the computation of the required surface currents: our first strategy makes use of the Debye representation results for the electromagnetic field and builds up on previous control results for scalar fields discussed in [J. Integral Equations Appl. 26 (2014), pp. 553–579]; the second strategy we propose makes use of integral electromagnetic representation results and follows theoretically from the first. We provide theoretical validation for both computational schemes and present supporting numerical simulations for the first strategy in several applied scenarios.