Schwarz Solvers and Preconditioners for the Closest Point Method

Abstract

The discretization of surface intrinsic elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) poses interesting challenges not seen in flat spaces. The discretization of these PDEs typically proceeds by either parametrizing the surface, triangulating the surface, or embedding the surface in a higher dimensional flat space. The closest point method (CPM) is an embedding method that represents surfaces using a function that maps points in the embedding space to their closest points on the surface. In the CPM, this mapping also serves as an extension operator that brings surface intrinsic data onto the embedding space, allowing PDEs to be numerically approximated by standard methods in a narrow tubular neighborhood of the surface. We focus on numerically approximating the positive Helmholtz equation, $\left(c-\Delta_{\mathcal{S}}\right)u=f,~c\in\mathbb{R}^+$, by the CPM paired with finite differences. This yields a large, sparse, and nonsymmetric system to be solved. Herein, we develop restricted additive Schwarz (RAS) and optimized restricted additive Schwarz (ORAS) solvers and preconditioners for this discrete system. In particular, we develop a general strategy for computing overlapping partitions of the computational domain and defining the corresponding Dirichlet and Robin transmission conditions. We demonstrate that the convergence of the ORAS solvers and preconditioners can be improved by using a modified transmission condition where more than two overlapping subdomains meet. Numerical experiments are provided for a variety of analytical and triangulated surfaces. We find that ORAS solvers and preconditioners outperform their RAS counterparts and that, as expected using domain decomposition (DD) as a preconditioner rather than as a solver gives faster convergence. The methods exhibit good parallel scalability over the range of process counts tested.