Numerical Algorithms for Partially Segregated Elliptic Systems

Abstract

We develop numerical methods for elliptic systems governed by partial segregation constraints, in which three nonnegative components are required to have a vanishing pointwise product throughout the domain. This constraint enforces that at least one component must be zero at every spatial location, leading to a highly nonconvex admissible set that prevents the use of standard convex optimization techniques. We propose two complementary computational frameworks. The first is a strong-competition penalty method, solved via damped Gauss-Seidel/Picard iterations with a continuation strategy on the penalty parameter, for which we establish compactness results, Lipschitz estimates, and interior exponential improvement in the strong-competition regime. The second is a projected gradient method, together with an accelerated variant, that exploits an explicit pointwise projection onto the three-phase segregation set. Numerical experiments on a suite of benchmark boundary configurations confirm that both algorithms resolve segregated phase patterns.