On Edge Multiscale Space based Hybrid Schwarz Preconditioner for Helmholtz Problems with Large Wavenumbers

Abstract

In this work, we develop a novel hybrid Schwarz method, termed as edge multiscale space based hybrid Schwarz (EMs-HS), for solving the Helmholtz problem with large wavenumbers. The problem is discretized using $H^1$-conforming nodal finite element methods on meshes of size $h$ decreasing faster than $k^{-1}$ such that the discretization error remains bounded as the wavenumber $k$ increases. EMs-HS consists of a one-level Schwarz preconditioner (RAS-imp) and a coarse solver in a multiplicative way. The RAS-imp preconditioner solves local problems on overlapping subdomains with impedance boundary conditions in parallel, and combines the local solutions using partition of unity. The coarse space is an edge multiscale space proposed in [13]. The key idea is to first establish a local splitting of the solution over each subdomain by a local bubble part and local Helmholtz harmonic extension part, and then to derive a global splitting by means of the partition of unity. This facilitates representing the solution as the sum of a global bubble part and a global Helmholtz harmonic extension part. We prove that the EMs-HS preconditioner leads to a convergent fixed-point iteration uniformly for large wavenumbers, by rigorously analyzing the approximation properties of the coarse space to the global Helmholtz harmonic extension part and to the solution of the adjoint problem. Distinctly, the theoretical convergence analysis are valid in two extreme cases: using minimal overlapping size among subdomains (of order $h$), or using coarse spaces of optimal dimension (of magnitude $k^d$, where $d$ is the spatial dimension). We provide extensive numerical results on the sharpness of the theoretical findings and also demonstrate the method on challenging heterogeneous models.