Iterative solution applied to the Helmholtz equation: Complex deflation on unstructured grids

Extensions of deflation techniques developed for the Poisson and Navier equations (Aubry et al., 2008; Mut et al., 2010; Löhner et al., 2011; Aubry et al., 2011) [1–4] are presented for the Helmholtz equation. Numerous difficulties arise compared to the previous case. After discretization, the matrix is now indefinite without Sommerfeld boundary conditions, or complex with them. It is generally symmetric complex but not Hermitian, discarding optimal short recurrences from an iterative solver viewpoint (Saad, 2003) [5]. Furthermore, the kernel of the operator in an infinite space typically does not belong to the discrete space. The choice of the deflation space is discussed, as well as the relationship between dispersion error and solver convergence. Similarly to the symmetric definite positive (SPD) case, subdomain deflation accelerates convergence if the low frequency eigenmodes are well described. However, the analytic eigenvectors are well represented only if the dispersion error is low. CPU savings are therefore restricted to a low to mid frequency regime compared to the mesh size, which could be still relevant from an application viewpoint, given the ease of implementation.