Kolja Brix

Kolja Brix, Martin Campos Pinto, Claudio Canuto et al.

This paper is concerned with the design, analysis and implementation of preconditioning concepts for spectral Discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of elliptic boundary value problems. While presently known techniques realize a growth of the condition numbers that is logarithmic in the polynomial degrees when all degrees are equal and quadratic otherwise, our main objective is to realize full robustness with respect to arbitrarily large locally varying polynomial degrees degrees, i.e., under mild grading constraints condition numbers stay uniformly bounded with respect to the mesh size and variable degrees. The conceptual foundation of the envisaged preconditioners is the auxiliary space method. The main conceptual ingredients that will be shown in this framework to yield "optimal" preconditioners in the above sense are Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto grids in connection with certain associated anisotropic nested dyadic grids as well as specially adapted wavelet preconditioners for the resulting low order auxiliary problems. Moreover, the preconditioners have a modular form that facilitates somewhat simplified partial realizations. One of the components can, for instance, be conveniently combined with domain decomposition, at the expense though of a logarithmic growth of condition numbers. Our analysis is complemented by quantitative experimental studies of the main components.

Kolja Brix, Claudio Canuto, Wolfgang Dahmen

Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods offer an enormous flexibility regarding local grid refinement and variation of polynomial degrees for a variety of different problem classes. With a focus on diffusion problems, we consider DG discretizations for elliptic boundary value problems, in particular the efficient solution of the linear systems of equations that arise from the Symmetric Interior Penalty DG method. We announce a multi-stage preconditioner which produces uniformly bounded condition numbers and aims at supporting the full flexibility of DG methods under mild grading conditions. The constructions and proofs are detailed in an upcoming series of papers by the authors. Our preconditioner is based on the concept of the auxiliary space method and techniques from spectral element methods such as Legendre-Gauß-Lobatto grids. The presentation for the case of geometrically conforming meshes is complemented by numerical studies that shed some light on constants arising in four basic estimates used in the second stage.

Kolja Brix, Yasemin Hafizogullari, Andreas Platen

We consider the inverse refractor and the inverse reflector problem. The task is to design a free-form lens or a free-form mirror that, when illuminated by a point light source, produces a given illumination pattern on a target. Both problems can be modeled by strongly nonlinear second-order partial differential equations of Monge-Ampère type. In [Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. 25 (2015), pp. 803--837, DOI: 10.1142/S0218202515500190] the authors have proposed a B-spline collocation method which has been applied to the inverse reflector problem. Now this approach is extended to the inverse refractor problem. We explain in depth the collocation method and how to handle boundary conditions and constraints. The paper concludes with numerical results of refracting and reflecting optical surfaces and their verification via ray tracing.