This paper introduces a new sweeping preconditioner for the iterative solution of the variable coefficient Helmholtz equation in two and three dimensions. The algorithms follow the general structure of constructing an approximate @math factorization by eliminating the unknowns layer by layer starting from an absorbing layer or boundary condition. The central idea of this paper is to approximate the Schur complement matrices of the factorization using moving perfectly matched layers (PMLs) introduced in the interior of the domain. Applying each Schur complement matrix is equivalent to solving a quasi-1D problem with a banded LU factorization in the 2D case and to solving a quasi-2D problem with a multifrontal method in the 3D case. The resulting preconditioner has linear application cost and the preconditioned iterative solver converges in a number of iterations that is essentially indefinite of the number of unknowns or the frequency. Numerical results are presented in both two and three dimensions to demonstrate the efficiency of this new preconditioner.
The most efficient direct methods for solving the discrete Helmholtz systems are the multifrontal methods or their pivoted versions @cite_17 @cite_7 @cite_21 . The multifrontal methods exploit the locality of the discrete operator and construct an @math factorization based on a hierarchical partitioning of the domain. The cost of a multifrontal method depends strongly on the number of dimensions. For a 2D problem with @math unknowns, a multifrontal method takes @math flops and @math storage space. The prefactor is usually rather small, making the multifrontal methods effectively the default choice for most 2D Helmholtz problems. However, for a 3D problem with @math unknowns, a multifrontal method requires @math flops and @math storage space, which can be very costly for large scale 3D problems.
@cite_21 @cite_7 @cite_17
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SUMMARY In this paper, we address the solution of three-dimensional heterogeneous Helmholtz problems discretized with second-order finite difference methods with application to acoustic waveform inversion in geophysics. In this setting, the numerical simulation of wave propagation phenomena requires the approximate solution of possibly very large indefinite linear systems of equations. For that purpose, we propose and analyse an iterative two-grid method acting on the Helmholtz operator where the coarse grid problem is solved inaccurately. A cycle of a multigrid method applied to a complex shifted Laplacian operator is used as a preconditioner for the approximate solution of this coarse problem. A single cycle of the new method is then used as a variable preconditioner of a flexible Krylov subspace method. We analyse the properties of the resulting preconditioned operator by Fourier analysis. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm on three-dimensional applications. The proposed numerical method allows us to solve three-dimensional wave propagation problems even at high frequencies on a reasonable number of cores of a distributed memory computer. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Using a finite element method to solve the Helmholtz equation leads to a sparse system of equations which in three dimensions is too large to solve directly. It is also non-Hermitian and highly indefinite and consequently difficult to solve iteratively. The approach taken in this paper is to precondition this linear system with a new preconditioner and then solve it iteratively using a Krylov subspace method. Numerical analysis shows the preconditioner to be effective on a simple 1D test problem, and results are presented showing considerable convergence acceleration for a number of different Krylov methods for more complex problems in 2D, as well as for the more general problem of harmonic disturbances to a non-stagnant steady flow. The Helmholtz equation governing wave propagation and scattering phenomena is difficult to solve numerically. Its discretization with piecewise linear finite elements results in typically large linear systems of equations. The inherently parallel domain decomposition methods constitute hence a promising class of preconditioners. An essential element of these methods is a good coarse space. Here, the Helmholtz equation presents a particular challenge, as even slight deviations from the optimal choice can be devastating. In this paper, we present a coarse space that is based on local eigenproblems involving the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator. Our construction is completely automatic, ensuring good convergence rates without the need for parameter tuning. Moreover, it naturally respects local variations in the wave number and is hence suited also for heterogeneous Helmholtz problems. The resulting method is parallel by design and its efficiency is demonstrated on 2D homogeneous and heterogeneous numerical examples. In this paper we extend the source transfer domain decomposition method (STDDM) introduced by the authors to solve the Helmholtz problems in two-layered media, the Helmholtz scattering problems with bounded scatterer, and Helmholtz prob- lems in 3D unbounded domains. The STDDM is based on the decomposition of the domain into non-overlapping layers and the idea of source transfer which transfers the sources equivalently layer by layer so that the solution in the final layer can be solved using a PML method defined locally outside the last two layers. The details of STDDM is given for each extension. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of STDDM as a preconditioner for solving the discretization problem of the Helmholtz problems considered in the paper.