A breakdown-free block conjugate gradient method

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In this paper, we analyze all possible situations of rank deficiency that cause breakdown in block conjugate gradient (BCG) solvers. A simple solution, breakdown-free block conjugate gradient (BFBCG), is designed to address the rank deficiency problem. The rationale of the BFBCG algorithm is to derive new forms of parameter matrices based on the potentially reduced search subspace to handle rank deficiency. Orthogonality properties and convergence of BFBCG in case of rank deficiency are justified accordingly with mathematical rigor. BFBCG yields faster convergence than restarting BCG when breakdown occurs. Numerical examples suffering from rank deficiency are provided to demonstrate the robustness of BFBCG.