arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jeffrey Galkowski.
For a wide class of Helmholtz scattering problems (namely, those fitting in the black-box framework of Sj\"ostrand--Zworski) we prove that the error incurred by approximating the radiation condition by a Cartesian perfectly-matched layer (PML) decreases exponentially in the width of the PML, the strength of the PML scaling, and the frequency.
We consider the $hp$-FEM applied to the Helmholtz scattering problem with wavenumber $k$, truncated with a perfectly-matched layer. The scatterer consists of a combination of Dirichlet, Neumann, and penetrable obstacles together with variable coefficients. Provided that the Helmholtz solution operator is polynomially bounded in $k$, all coefficients are piecewise smooth, all boundary surfaces are Gevrey and all coefficients restricted to boundary surfaces are Gevrey together with all their normal derivatives, we show that the $hp$-FEM is quasioptimal when $p\geq 1+\varepsilon \log k$ and $hk/p$ is sufficiently small; i.e., the $hp$-FEM does not suffer from the pollution effect. This result generalises the analogous results in both [Bernkopf, Chaumont-Frelet, Melenk 2025] (proved for piecewise analytic coefficients and analytic boundaries) and [Galkowski, Lafontaine, Spence, Wunsch 2024] (proved for smooth coefficients that are analytic near analytic obstacles) to a much larger class of scatterers.
A classical Davies generator provides a Lindbladian for which the Gibbs state is stationary. Its construction involves precise knowledge of the Bohr spectrum or equivalently state evolution for all times. Recently Chen, Kastoryano and Gily\'en proposed a construction involving localisation in time and carried out in the case of finite dimensional Hilbert spaces. The resulting generators are called quantum Gibbs samplers as the corresponding Lindblad evolution is expected to settle to the Gibbs state. In this paper, we show that the localised Davies construction also works for natural classes of unbounded operators, including pseudodifferential operators used in the study of classical/quantum correspondence in Lindblad evolution. Our emphasis is microlocal: we prove that the localised jump operators are themselves pseudodifferential, and hence pseudolocal. The proof involves a novel version of Egorov's theorem valid for all times.
We construct a scattering matrix with operator valued entries describing solutions to the 1+1 wave equation where permittivities has memory and depends on time and space. It is the analogue of the scattering matrix for spatially localised perturbations where the entries are functions of frequency and appear as Fourier multipliers in solutions of the wave equation. This provides a mathematical explanation of the numerical construction in the recent paper by Horsley et al. The appendix by Zhen Huang and Maciej Zworski presents a numerical scheme for solving the wave equation considered in this article.
We consider the numerical solution of high-frequency scattering problems modeled by the Helmholtz equation with a bounded obstacle. Although the analysis of this problem dates back at least 50 years, over the past decade or so, tools and techniques from $\textit{semiclassical analysis}$ have provided a new perspective and been used to settle several long-standing open problems in this area. Semiclassical analysis works in phase space (i.e., position and frequency) and describes rigorously the extent to which solutions of high-frequency PDEs are dictated by the properties of the corresponding geometric-optic rays. The goals of the article are to (i) give a introduction to semiclassical analysis aimed at non-experts and (ii) showcase some of the numerical-analysis results about finite-element methods, boundary-element methods, and domain-decomposition methods obtained using semiclassical techniques.
This paper is concerned with solving the Helmholtz exterior Dirichlet and Neumann problems with large wavenumber $k$ and smooth obstacles using the standard second-kind boundary integral equations. We consider Galerkin and collocation methods -- with subspaces consisting of $\textit{either}$ piecewise polynomials (in 2-d for collocation, in any dimension for Galerkin) $\textit{or}$ trigonometric polynomials (in 2-d) -- as well as a fully discrete quadrature (Nystr\"om) method based on trigonometric polynomials (in 2-d). For each of these methods, we prove -- in many cases for the first time -- rigorous results about the fundamental question: how quickly must the number of degrees of freedom (the dimension of the approximation space) grow with $k$ to maintain accuracy of the computed solution? Importantly, we determine which of these methods suffer from $\textit{the pollution effect}$. That is, we address the question: must the number of points per wavelength $\to \infty$ to maintain accuracy as $k\to\infty$?
The $h$-version of the finite-element method ($h$-FEM) applied to the high-frequency Helmholtz equation has been a classic topic in numerical analysis since the 1990s. It is now rigorously understood that (using piecewise polynomials of degree $p$ on a mesh of a maximal width $h$) the conditions "$(hk)^p \rho$ sufficiently small" and "$(hk)^{2p} \rho$ sufficiently small" guarantee, respectively, $k$-uniform quasioptimality (QO) and bounded relative error (BRE), where $\rho$ is the norm of the solution operator with $\rho\sim k$ for non-trapping problems. Empirically, these conditions are observed to be optimal in the context of $h$-FEM with a uniform mesh. This paper demonstrates that QO and BRE can be achieved using certain non-uniform meshes that violate the conditions above on $h$ and involve coarser meshes away from trapping and in the perfectly matched layer (PML). The main theorem details how varying the meshwidth in one region affects errors both in that region and elsewhere. One notable consequence is that, for any scattering problem (trapping or nontrapping), in the PML one only needs $hk$ to be sufficiently small; i.e. there is no pollution in the PML. The motivating idea for the analysis is that the Helmholtz data-to-solution map behaves differently depending on the locations of both the measurement and data, in particular, on the properties of billiards trajectories (i.e. rays) through these sets. Because of this, it is natural that the approximation requirements for finite-element spaces in a subset should depend on the properties of billiard rays through that set. Inserting this behaviour into the latest duality arguments for the FEM applied to the high-frequency Helmholtz equation allows us to retain detailed information about the influence of $\textit{both}$ the mesh structure $\textit{and}$ the behaviour of the true solution on local errors in FEM.
We study scattering by metamaterials with negative indices of refraction, which are known to support \emph{surface plasmons} -- long-lived states that are highly localized at the boundary of the cavity. This type of states has found uses in a variety of modern technologies. In this article, we study surface plasmons in the setting of non-trapping cavities; i.e. when all billiard trajectories outside the cavity escape to infinity. We characterize the indices of refraction which support surface plasmons, show that the corresponding resonances lie super-polynomially close to the real axis, describe the localization properties of the corresponding resonant states, and give an asymptotic formula for their number.
We give a novel convergence theory for two-level hybrid Schwarz domain-decomposition (DD) methods for finite-element discretisations of the high-frequency Helmholtz equation. This theory gives sufficient conditions for the preconditioned matrix to be close to the identity, and covers DD subdomains of arbitrary size, arbitrary absorbing layers/boundary conditions on both the global and local Helmholtz problems, and coarse spaces not necessarily related to the subdomains. The assumptions on the coarse space are satisfied by the approximation spaces using problem-adapted basis functions that have been recently analysed as coarse spaces for the Helmholtz equation, as well as all spaces that are known to be quasi-optimal via a Schatz-type argument. As an example, we apply this theory when the coarse space consists of piecewise polynomials; these are then the first rigorous convergence results about a two-level Schwarz preconditioner applied to the high-frequency Helmholtz equation with a coarse space that does not consist of problem-adapted basis functions.
In the analysis of the $h$-version of the finite-element method (FEM), with fixed polynomial degree $p$, applied to the Helmholtz equation with wavenumber $k\gg 1$, the $\textit{asymptotic regime}$ is when $(hk)^p C_{\rm sol}$ is sufficiently small and the sequence of Galerkin solutions are quasioptimal; here $C_{\rm sol}$ is the $L^2 \to L^2$ norm of the Helmholtz solution operator, with $C_{\rm sol} \sim k$ for nontrapping problems. In the $\textit{preasymptotic regime}$, one expects that if $(hk)^{2p}C_{\rm sol}$ is sufficiently small, then (for physical data) the relative error of the Galerkin solution is controllably small. In this paper, we prove the natural error bounds in the preasymptotic regime for the variable-coefficient Helmholtz equation in the exterior of a Dirichlet, or Neumann, or penetrable obstacle (or combinations of these) and with the radiation condition $\textit{either}$ realised exactly using the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map on the boundary of a ball $\textit{or}$ approximated either by a radial perfectly-matched layer (PML) or an impedance boundary condition. Previously, such bounds for $p>1$ were only available for Dirichlet obstacles with the radiation condition approximated by an impedance boundary condition. Our result is obtained via a novel generalisation of the "elliptic-projection" argument (the argument used to obtain the result for $p=1$) which can be applied to a wide variety of abstract Helmholtz-type problems.
We discuss parallel (additive) and sequential (multiplicative) variants of overlapping Schwarz methods for the Helmholtz equation in $\mathbb{R}^d$, with large real wavenumber and smooth variable wave speed. The radiation condition is approximated by a Cartesian perfectly-matched layer (PML). The domain-decomposition subdomains are overlapping hyperrectangles with Cartesian PMLs at their boundaries. In a recent paper ({\tt arXiv:2404.02156}), the current authors proved (for both variants) that, after a specified number of iterations -- depending on the behaviour of the geometric-optic rays -- the error is smooth and smaller than any negative power of the wavenumber $k$. For the parallel method, the specified number of iterations is less than the maximum number of subdomains, counted with their multiplicity, that a geometric-optic ray can intersect. The theory, which is given at the continuous level and makes essential use of semi-classical analysis, assumes that the overlaps of the subdomains and the widths of the PMLs are all independent of the wavenumber. In this paper we extend the results of {\tt arXiv:2404.02156} by experimentally studying the behaviour of the methods in the practically important case when both the overlap and the PML width decrease as the wavenumber increases. We find that (at least for constant wavespeed), the methods remain robust to increasing $k$, even for miminal overlap, when the PML is one wavelength wide.
We prove sharp wavenumber-explicit error bounds for first- or second-family-N\'ed\'elec-element (a.k.a. edge-element) conforming discretisations, of arbitrary (fixed) order, of the variable-coefficient time-harmonic Maxwell equations posed in a bounded domain with perfect electric conductor (PEC) boundary conditions. The PDE coefficients are allowed to be piecewise regular and complex-valued; this set-up therefore includes scattering from a PEC obstacle and/or variable real-valued coefficients, with the radiation condition approximated by a perfectly matched layer (PML). In the analysis of the $h$-version of the finite-element method, with fixed polynomial degree $p$, applied to the time-harmonic Maxwell equations, the $\textit{asymptotic regime}$ is when the meshwidth, $h$, is small enough (in a wavenumber-dependent way) that the Galerkin solution is quasioptimal independently of the wavenumber, while the $\textit{preasymptotic regime}$ is the complement of the asymptotic regime. The results of this paper are the first preasymptotic error bounds for the time-harmonic Maxwell equations using first-family N\'ed\'elec elements or higher-than-lowest-order second-family N\'ed\'elec elements. Furthermore, they are the first wavenumber-explicit results, even in the asymptotic regime, for Maxwell scattering problems with a non-empty scatterer.
Let $(M,g)$ be a Zoll manifold, i.e., a smooth, compact, Riemannian manifold without boundary all of whose geodesics are closed with a minimal common period $T$. The positive definite Laplace-Beltrami operator has eigenvalues $\{λ_j^2\}_j$ which cluster around $ν^2_\ell$ for some sequence $ν_\ell\to \infty$. This article is concerned with the number of $λ_j$ in a window of fixed size $\mathrm{w}$ around $ν_\ell$, denoted by $\mathbf{N}(ν_\ell,\mathrm{w}):=\#\{j\,:\, λ_j\in[ν_\ell-\mathrm{w},ν_\ell+\mathrm{w}]\}.$ When the set of trajectories with period smaller than $T$ has zero measure, there is $c_{n}>0$, depending only on $n=\operatorname{dim} M$, such that $$ \mathbf{N}(ν_\ell,\mathrm{w}) =c_n\operatorname{vol}_g(M)ν_{\ell}^{n-1}+o(ν_{\ell}^{n-1}), $$ as $\ell \to \infty$. However, for a general Zoll manifold this may not be the case. We show that, nevertheless, there is $N>0$, independent of $\ell$, such that $$ \sum_{j=0}^{N-1}\mathbf{N}(ν_{\ell+j},\mathrm{w})= c_nN\operatorname{vol}_g(M)ν_{\ell}^{n-1}+o(ν_{\ell}^{n-1}), $$ as $\ell \to \infty$. In addition to asymptotics for the counting function, we study the kernel of the spectral projector for the Laplacian, $Π_{\ell,\mathrm{w}}(x,y)$ onto the spectrum in ${\bigcup_{j=0}^{N-1}[ν_{\ell+j}-\mathrm{w},ν_{\ell+j}+\mathrm{w}]}$. We show that for $x$ and $y$ in a shrinking neighborhood of a point with few loops of length smaller than $T$, $Π_{\ell,\mathrm{w}}(x,y)$ and its derivatives have the same asymptotics as those on the round sphere and flat torus.
We show that for the Lindblad evolution defined using (at most) quadratically growing classical Hamiltonians and (at most) linearly growing classical jump functions (quantized into jump operators assumed to satisfy certain ellipticity conditions and modeling interaction with a larger system), the evolution of a quantum observable remains close to the classical Fokker--Planck evolution in the Hilbert--Schmidt norm for times vastly exceeding the Ehrenfest time (the limit of such agreement with no jump operators). The time scale is the same as in the recent papers by Hernández--Ranard--Riedel but the statement and methods are different. The appendix presents numerical experiments illustrating the classical/quantum correspondence in Lindblad evolution and comparing it to the mathematical results.
For $h$-FEM discretisations of the Helmholtz equation with wavenumber $k$, we obtain $k$-explicit analogues of the classic local FEM error bounds of [Nitsche, Schatz 1974], [Wahlbin 1991], [Demlow, Guzmán, Schatz 2011], showing that these bounds hold with constants independent of $k$, provided one works in Sobolev norms weighted with $k$ in the natural way. We prove two main results: (i) a bound on the local $H^1$ error by the best approximation error plus the $L^2$ error, both on a slightly larger set, and (ii) the bound in (i) but now with the $L^2$ error replaced by the error in a negative Sobolev norm. The result (i) is valid for shape-regular triangulations, and is the $k$-explicit analogue of the main result of [Demlow, Guzmán, Schatz, 2011]. The result (ii) is valid when the mesh is locally quasi-uniform on the scale of the wavelength (i.e., on the scale of $k^{-1}$) and is the $k$-explicit analogue of the results of [Nitsche, Schatz 1974], [Wahlbin 1991]. Since our Sobolev spaces are weighted with $k$ in the natural way, the result (ii) indicates that the Helmholtz FEM solution is locally quasi-optimal modulo low frequencies (i.e., frequencies $\lesssim k$). Numerical experiments confirm this property, and also highlight interesting propagation phenomena in the Helmholtz FEM error.
We study overlapping Schwarz methods for the Helmholtz equation posed in any dimension with large, real wavenumber and smooth variable wave speed. The radiation condition is approximated by a Cartesian perfectly-matched layer (PML). The domain-decomposition subdomains are overlapping hyperrectangles with Cartesian PMLs at their boundaries. The overlaps of the subdomains and the widths of the PMLs are all taken to be independent of the wavenumber. For both parallel (i.e., additive) and sequential (i.e., multiplicative) methods, we show that after a specified number of iterations -- depending on the behaviour of the geometric-optic rays -- the error is smooth and smaller than any negative power of the wavenumber. For the parallel method, the specified number of iterations is less than the maximum number of subdomains, counted with their multiplicity, that a geometric-optic ray can intersect. These results, which are illustrated by numerical experiments, are the first wavenumber-explicit results about convergence of overlapping Schwarz methods for the Helmholtz equation, and the first wavenumber-explicit results about convergence of any domain-decomposition method for the Helmholtz equation with a non-trivial scatterer (here a variable wave speed).
In this article, we study propagation of defect measures for Schrödinger operators, $-h^2Δ_g+V$, on a Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$ of dimension $n$ with $V$ having conormal singularities along a hypersurface $Y$ in the sense that derivatives along vector fields tangent to $Y$ preserve the regularity of $V$. We show that the standard propagation theorem holds for bicharacteristics travelling transversally to the surface $Y$ whenever the potential is absolutely continuous. Furthermore, even when bicharacteristics are tangent to $Y$ at exactly first order, as long as the potential has an absolutely continuous first derivative, standard propagation continues to hold.
We consider approximation of the variable-coefficient Helmholtz equation in the exterior of a Dirichlet obstacle using perfectly-matched-layer (PML) truncation; it is well known that this approximation is exponentially accurate in the PML width and the scaling angle, and the approximation was recently proved to be exponentially accurate in the wavenumber $k$ in [Galkowski, Lafontaine, Spence, 2021]. We show that the $hp$-FEM applied to this problem does not suffer from the pollution effect, in that there exist $C_1,C_2>0$ such that if $hk/p\leq C_1$ and $p \geq C_2 \log k$ then the Galerkin solutions are quasioptimal (with constant independent of $k$), under the following two conditions (i) the solution operator of the original Helmholtz problem is polynomially bounded in $k$ (which occurs for "most" $k$ by [Lafontaine, Spence, Wunsch, 2021]), and (ii) either there is no obstacle and the coefficients are smooth or the obstacle is analytic and the coefficients are analytic in a neighbourhood of the obstacle and smooth elsewhere. This $hp$-FEM result is obtained via a decomposition of the PML solution into "high-" and "low-frequency" components, analogous to the decomposition for the original Helmholtz solution recently proved in [Galkowski, Lafontaine, Spence, Wunsch, 2022]. The decomposition is obtained using tools from semiclassical analysis (i.e., the PDE techniques specifically designed for studying Helmholtz problems with large $k$).