  We present a new Lattice Boltzmann (LB) formulation to solve the Maxwell
equations for electromagnetic (EM) waves propagating in a heterogeneous medium.
By using a pseudo-vector discrete Boltzmann distribution, the scheme is shown
to reproduce the continuum Maxwell equations. The technique compares well with
a pseudo-spectral method at solving for two-dimensional wave propagation in a
heterogeneous medium, which by design contains substantial contrasts in the
refractive index. The extension to three dimensions follows naturally and,
owing to the recognized efficiency of LB schemes for parallel computation in
irregular geometries, it gives a powerful method to numerically simulate a wide
range of problems involving EM wave propagation in complex media.
