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Maxwell theory is one of the most successful and reliable physical theories with a deep impact on engineering. Based on this theory, a huge number of new devices have been invented that dramatically changed every day's life. Without Maxwell theory, we probably would neither have electronic telecommunication nor computers. Meanwhile, computers have become the most powerful instrument for those working on Maxwell's equations and therefore. Traditional analytic solutions were based on several assumptions that simplified the calculations and reduced the range of applications so much that only very simple structures could be analyzed. Despite of the hard brain work in behind, such solutions were often rejected or ignored by practitioners who preferred to design new devices based on experience and measurements.

Computational electromagnetics allow us to write codes with much less restrictions and a much wider range of applications than analytic work. Mainly in the last three decades, many promising and powerful codes have been developed. These codes are often based on much older numerical and mathematical methods that were first applied in mechanics or other disciplines of physics. Due to the limited power of early computers, most of the codes were designed for analyzing a single, given structure. In the design process of new devices, one is not interested in the detailed analysis of a single structure. Instead, one is interested in the analysis of many, similar'concurrent'structures. Essentially, one is searching in a huge search space of possible structures for an'optimal'structure that meets the desired specifications. For such a …