Stable Multiscale Petrov-Galerkin Finite Element Method for High Frequency Acoustic Scattering

We present and analyze a pollution-free Petrov-Galerkin multiscale finite element method for the Helmholtz problem with large wave number $κ$ as a variant of [Peterseim, ArXiv:1411.1944, 2014]. We use standard continuous $Q_1$ finite elements at a coarse discretization scale $H$ as trial functions, whereas the test functions are computed as the solutions of local problems at a finer scale $h$. The diameter of the support of the test functions behaves like $mH$ for some oversampling parameter $m$. Provided $m$ is of the order of $\log(κ)$ and $h$ is sufficiently small, the resulting method is stable and quasi-optimal in the regime where $H$ is proportional to $κ^{-1}$. In homogeneous (or more general periodic) media, the fine scale test functions depend only on local mesh-configurations. Therefore, the seemingly high cost for the computation of the test functions can be drastically reduced on structured meshes. We present numerical experiments in two and three space dimensions.