This Submission is for Special Issue on Underwater Acoustics: Perfectly Matched Layer Technique for Parabolic Equation Models in Ocean Acoustics

In ocean waveguides, the ocean bottom is usually approximated as a half-space. Thus, there exist no reflection waves at the half-space bottom and condition of radiation at infinity should be satisfied. In numerical solutions like parabolic equation methods, the depth domain has to be truncated, which can generate reflection waves from the truncated ocean bottom. To reduce the effect of reflection waves and to simulate an unbounded ocean bottom accurately, an artificial absorbing layer (ABL) was used. As was demonstrated, an ABL meets well the demand of accuracy in sound field calculation. However, both the sea-bottom layer and the artificial absorbing layer are needed to be set quite thick by using an ABL technique. Fortunately, a PML with several wavelengths can keep similar calculation accuracy with an ABL with dozens of wavelengths. In this paper, perfectly matched layer (PML) techniques for three parabolic equation (PE) models RAM, RAMS and a three-dimensional PE model in underwater acoustics are presented. A key technique of PML “complex coordinate stretching” is used to truncate unbounded domains and to simulate infinity radiation conditions instead of the ABL in those models. The numerical results illustrate that the PML technique is of higher efficiency than the ABL technique at truncating the infinity domain with minimal spurious reflections in PE models.