Catalin Turc

Oscar P. Bruno, Stephen P. Shipman, Catalin Turc et al.

This paper, Part I in a two-part series, presents (i) A simple and highly efficient algorithm for evaluation of quasi-periodic Green functions, as well as (ii) An associated boundary-integral equation method for the numerical solution of problems of scattering of waves by doubly periodic arrays of scatterers in three-dimensional space. Except for certain "Wood frequencies" at which the quasi-periodic Green function ceases to exist, the proposed approach, which is based on use of smooth windowing functions, gives rise to lattice sums which converge superalgebraically fast--that is, faster than any power of the number of terms used--in sharp contrast with the extremely slow convergence exhibited by the corresponding sums in absence of smooth windowing. (The Wood-frequency problem is treated in Part II.) A proof presented in this paper establishes rigorously the superalgebraic convergence of the windowed lattice sums. A variety of numerical results demonstrate the practical efficiency of the proposed approach.

Oscar P. Bruno, Stephen P. Shipman, Catalin Turc et al.

This work presents an efficient method for evaluation of wave scattering by doubly periodic diffraction gratings at or near "Wood anomaly frequencies". At these frequencies, one or more grazing Rayleigh waves exist, and the lattice sum for the quasi-periodic Green function ceases to exist. We present a modification of this sum by adding two types of terms to it. The first type adds linear combinations of "shifted" Green functions, ensuring that the spatial singularities introduced by these terms are located below the grating and therefore outside of the physical domain. With suitable coefficient choices these terms annihilate the growing contributions in the original lattice sum and yield algebraic convergence. Convergence of arbitrarily high order can be obtained by including sufficiently many shifts. The second type of added terms are quasi-periodic plane wave solutions of the Helmholtz equation which reinstate certain necessary grazing modes without leading to blow-up at Wood anomalies. Using the new quasi-periodic Green function, we establish, for the first time, that the Dirichlet problem of scattering by a smooth doubly periodic scattering surface at a Wood frequency is uniquely solvable. We also present an efficient high-order numerical method based on the this new Green function for the problem of scattering by doubly periodic three-dimensional surfaces at and around Wood frequencies. We believe this is the first solver in existence that is applicable to Wood-frequency doubly periodic scattering problems. We demonstrate the proposed approach by means of applications to problems of acoustic scattering by doubly periodic gratings at various frequencies, including frequencies away from, at, and near Wood anomalies.

Carlos Pérez-Arancibia, Stephen Shipman, Catalin Turc et al.

We develop a non-overlapping domain decomposition method (DDM) for scalar wave scattering by periodic layered media. Our approach relies on robust boundary-integral equation formulations of Robin-to-Robin (RtR) maps throughout the frequency spectrum, including cutoff (or Wood) frequencies. We overcome the obstacle of non-convergent quasi-periodic Green functions at these frequencies by incorporating newly introduced shifted Green functions. Using the latter in the definition of quasi-periodic boundary-integral operators leads to rigorously stable computations of RtR operators. We develop Nyström discretizations of the RtR maps that rely on trigonometric interpolation, singularity resolution, and fast convergent windowed quasi-periodic Green functions. We solve the tridiagonal DDM system via recursive Schur complements and establish rigorously that this procedure is always completed successfully. We present a variety of numerical results concerning Wood frequencies in two and three dimensions as well as large numbers of layers.

Victor Dominguez, Mark Lyon, Catalin Turc

We present a comparison between the performance of solvers based on Nyström discretizations of several well-posed boundary integral equation formulations of Helmholtz transmission problems in two-dimensional Lipschitz domains. Specifically, we focus on the following four classes of boundary integral formulations of Helmholtz transmission problems (1) the classical first kind integral equations for transmission problems, (2) the classical second kind integral equations for transmission problems, (3) the {\em single} integral equation formulations, and (4) certain direct counterparts of recently introduced Generalized Combined Source Integral Equations. The former two formulations were the only formulations whose well-posedness in Lipschitz domains was rigorously established. We establish the well-posedness of the latter two formulations in appropriate functional spaces of boundary traces of solutions of transmission Helmholtz problems in Lipschitz domains. We give ample numerical evidence that Nyström solvers based on formulations (3) and (4) are computationally more advantageous than solvers based on the classical formulations (1) and (2), especially in the case of high-contrast transmission problems at high frequencies.

Catalin Turc, Yassine Boubendir, Mohamed Kamel Riahi

We present a regularization strategy that leads to well-conditioned boundary integral equation formulations of Helmholtz equations with impedance boundary conditions in two-dimensional Lipschitz domains. We consider both the case of classical impedance boundary conditions, as well as the case of transmission impedance conditions wherein the impedances are certain coercive operators. The latter type of problems is instrumental in the speed up of the convergence of Domain Decomposition Methods for Helmholtz problems. Our regularized formulations use as unknowns the Dirichlet traces of the solution on the boundary of the domain. Taking advantage of the increased regularity of the unknowns in our formulations, we show through a variety of numerical results that a graded-mesh based Nyström discretization of these regularized formulations leads to efficient and accurate solutions of interior and exterior Helmholtz problems with impedance boundary conditions.

Carlos Jerez-Hanckes, Carlos Pérez-Arancibia, Catalin Turc

We present Nyström discretizations of multitrace formulations and non-overlapping Domain Decomposition Methods (DDM) for the solution of Helmholtz transmission problems for bounded composite scatterers with piecewise constant material properties. We investigate the performance of DDM with both classical Robin and generalized Robin boundary conditions. The generalized Robin boundary conditions incorporate square root Fourier multiplier approximations of Dirichlet to Neumann operators. While the classical version of DDM is not particularly well suited for Krylov subspace iterative solvers, we show that the associated DDM linear system can be efficiently solved by hierarchical elimination via Schur complements of the Robin data. We show through numerical examples that the latter version of DDM gives rise to small numbers of Krylov subspace iterations that depend mildly on the frequency and number of subdomains.

Yassine Boubendir, Carlos Jerez-Hanckes, Carlos Pérez-Arancibia et al.

We present non-overlapping Domain Decomposition Methods (DDM) based on quasi-optimal transmission operators for the solution of Helmholtz transmission problems with piece-wise constant material properties. The quasi-optimal transmission boundary conditions incorporate readily available approximations of Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators. These approximations consist of either complexified hypersingular boundary integral operators for the Helmholtz equation or square root Fourier multipliers with complex wavenumbers. We show that under certain regularity assumptions on the closed interface of material discontinuity, the DDM with quasi-optimal transmission conditions are well-posed. We present a DDM framework based on Robin-to-Robin (RtR) operators that can be computed robustly via boundary integral formulations. More importantly, the use of quasi-optimal transmission operators results in DDM that converge in small numbers of iterations even in the challenging high-contrast, high-frequency regime of Helmholtz transmission problems. Furthermore, the DDM presented in this text require only minor modifications to handle the case of transmission problems in partially coated domains, while still maintaining excellent convergence properties. We also investigate the dependence of the DDM iterative performance on the number of subdomains.

Carlos Pérez-Arancibia, Catalin Turc

This paper is the direct-formulation companion to [Burbano-Gallegos, P'erez-Arancibia, and Turc, ESAIM: M2AN, 60(1):273--315, 2026], which developed indirect combined-field-only boundary integral equations (BIEs) for time-harmonic electromagnetic scattering by smooth perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) obstacles, relying entirely on Helmholtz boundary integral operators. Here we exploit the same equivalence between the Maxwell PEC scattering problem and a pair of vector Helmholtz boundary value problems -- one for the electric field and one for the magnetic field -- to derive direct BIE formulations whose unknowns are the Dirichlet and Neumann traces of the total fields, decomposed into their normal and tangential surface components. These unknowns carry direct physical meaning: in particular, the magnetic-field formulation yields the surface electric currents as part of its solution. The mixed regularity of the two field-trace components requires introducing a tailored product H"older space, a distinctive feature absent from the indirect approach. We prove that the resulting Direct Electric and Magnetic Combined-Field-Only Integral Equations (D-ECFOIE and D-MCFOIE) are uniquely solvable at all frequencies, and introduce Calder'on-type regularizations (RD-ECFOIE and RD-MCFOIE) that render them of the Fredholm second kind. We further examine the low-frequency breakdown affecting the electric-field formulation and introduce a modified equation that enforces the physical charge-conservation constraints, which restores numerical accuracy and well-conditioned linear systems for frequencies arbitrarily close to zero. Numerical experiments, performed using a high-order Nystr"om solver based on the Density Interpolation Method and implemented in the Julia package Inti.jl, validate the accuracy and robustness of the proposed formulations across a range of geometries and frequencies.

Carlos Pérez-Arancibia, Luiz M. Faria, Catalin Turc

We present an effective harmonic density interpolation method for the numerical evaluation of singular and nearly singular Laplace boundary integral operators and layer potentials in two and three spatial dimensions. The method relies on the use of Green's third identity and local Taylor-like interpolations of density functions in terms of harmonic polynomials. The proposed technique effectively regularizes the singularities present in boundary integral operators and layer potentials, and recasts the latter in terms of integrands that are bounded or even more regular, depending on the order of the density interpolation. The resulting boundary integrals can then be easily, accurately, and inexpensively evaluated by means of standard quadrature rules. A variety of numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique when used in conjunction with the classical trapezoidal rule (to integrate over smooth curves) in two-dimensions, and with a Chebyshev-type quadrature rule (to integrate over surfaces given as unions of non-overlapping quadrilateral patches) in three-dimensions.

David Nicholls, Carlos Pérez-Arancibia, Catalin Turc

We present a sweeping preconditioner for quasi-optimal Domain Decomposition Methods (DDM) applied to Helmholtz transmission problems in periodic layered media. Quasi-optimal DD (QO DD) for Helmholtz equations rely on transmission operators that are approximations of Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) operators. Employing shape perturbation series, we construct approximations of DtN operators corresponding to periodic domains, which we then use as transmission operators in a non-overlapping DD framework. The Robin-to-Robin (RtR) operators that are the building blocks of DDM are expressed via robust boundary integral equation formulations. We use Nyström discretizations of quasi-periodic boundary integral operators to construct high-order approximations of RtR. Based on the premise that the quasi-optimal transmission operators should act like perfect transparent boundary conditions, we construct an approximate LU factorization of the tridiagonal QO DD matrix associated with periodic layered media, which is then used as a double sweep preconditioner. We present a variety of numerical results that showcase the effectiveness of the sweeping preconditioners applied to QO DD for the iterative solution of Helmholtz transmission problems in periodic layered media.

Michael Pedneault, Catalin Turc, Yassine Boubendir

We present a Schur complement Domain Decomposition (DD) algorithm for the solution of frequency domain multiple scattering problems. Just as in the classical DD methods we (1) enclose the ensemble of scatterers in a domain bounded by an artificial boundary, (2) we subdivide this domain into a collection of nonoverlapping subdomains so that the boundaries of the subdomains do not intersect any of the scatterers, and (3) we connect the solutions of the subproblems via Robin boundary conditions matching on the common interfaces between subdomains. We use subdomain Robin-to-Robin maps to recast the DD problem as a sparse linear system whose unknown consists of Robin data on the interfaces between subdomains---two unknowns per interface. The Robin-to-Robin maps are computed in terms of well-conditioned boundary integral operators. Unlike classical DD, we do not reformulate the Domain Decomposition problem in the form a fixed point iteration, but rather we solve the ensuing linear system by Gaussian elimination of the unknowns corresponding to inner interfaces between subdomains via Schur complements. Once all the unknowns corresponding to inner subdomains interfaces have been eliminated, we solve a much smaller linear system involving unknowns on the inner and outer artificial boundary. We present numerical evidence that our Schur complement DD algorithm can produce accurate solutions of very large multiple scattering problems that are out of reach for other existing approaches.