No Arabic abstract
We study the two primary families of spaces of finite element differential forms with respect to a simplicial mesh in any number of space dimensions. These spaces are generalizations of the classical finite element spaces for vector fields, frequently referred to as Raviart-Thomas, Brezzi-Douglas-Marini, and Nedelec spaces. In the present paper, we derive geometric decompositions of these spaces which lead directly to explicit local bases for them, generalizing the Bernstein basis for ordinary Lagrange finite elements. The approach applies to both families of finite element spaces, for arbitrary polynomial degree, arbitrary order of the differential forms, and an arbitrary simplicial triangulation in any number of space dimensions. A prominent role in the construction is played by the notion of a consistent family of extension operators, which expresses in an abstract framework a sufficient condition for deriving a geometric decomposition of a finite element space leading to a local basis.
Numerical computation of harmonic forms (typically called harmonic fields in three space dimensions) arises in various areas, including computer graphics and computational electromagnetics. The finite element exterior calculus framework also relies extensively on accurate computation of harmonic forms. In this work we study the convergence properties of adaptive finite element methods (AFEM) for computing harmonic forms. We show that a properly defined AFEM is contractive and achieves optimal convergence rate beginning from any initial conforming mesh. This result is contrasted with related AFEM convergence results for elliptic eigenvalue problems, where the initial mesh must be sufficiently fine in order for AFEM to achieve any provable convergence rate.
In this paper, we develop a structure-preserving discretization of the Lagrangian framework for electromagnetism, combining techniques from variational integrators and discrete differential forms. This leads to a general family of variational, multisymplectic numerical methods for solving Maxwells equations that automatically preserve key symmetries and invariants. In doing so, we demonstrate several new results, which apply both to some well-established numerical methods and to new methods introduced here. First, we show that Yees finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) scheme, along with a number of related methods, are multisymplectic and derive from a discrete Lagrangian variational principle. Second, we generalize the Yee scheme to unstructured meshes, not just in space but in 4-dimensional spacetime. This relaxes the need to take uniform time steps, or even to have a preferred time coordinate at all. Finally, as an example of the type of methods that can be developed within this general framework, we introduce a new asynchronous variational integrator (AVI) for solving Maxwells equations. These results are illustrated with some prototype simulations that show excellent energy and conservation behavior and lack of spurious modes, even for an irregular mesh with asynchronous time stepping.
We develop a general framework for construction and analysis of discrete extension operators with application to unfitted finite element approximation of partial differential equations. In unfitted methods so called cut elements intersected by the boundary occur and these elements must in general by stabilized in some way. Discrete extension operators provides such a stabilization by modification of the finite element space close to the boundary. More precisely, the finite element space is extended from the stable interior elements over the boundary in a stable way which also guarantees optimal approximation properties. Our framework is applicable to all standard nodal based finite elements of various order and regularity. We develop an abstract theory for elliptic problems and associated parabolic time dependent partial differential equations and derive a priori error estimates. We finally apply this to some examples of partial differential equations of different order including the interface problems, the biharmonic operator and the sixth order triharmonic operator.
We consider a standard elliptic partial differential equation and propose a geometric multigrid algorithm based on Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) maps for hybridized high-order finite element methods. The proposed unified approach is applicable to any locally conservative hybridized finite element method including multinumerics with different hybridized methods in different parts of the domain. For these methods, the linear system involves only the unknowns residing on the mesh skeleton, and constructing intergrid transfer operators is therefore not trivial. The key to our geometric multigrid algorithm is the physics-based energy-preserving intergrid transfer operators which depend only on the fine scale DtN maps. Thanks to these operators, we completely avoid upscaling of parameters and no information regarding subgrid physics is explicitly required on coarse meshes. Moreover, our algorithm is agglomeration-based and can straightforwardly handle unstructured meshes. We perform extensive numerical studies with hybridized mixed methods, hybridized discontinuous Galerkin method, weak Galerkin method, and a hybridized version of interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin methods on a range of elliptic problems including subsurface flow through highly heterogeneous porous media. We compare the performance of different smoothers and analyze the effect of stabilization parameters on the scalability of the multigrid algorithm.
In this paper, we define new unfitted finite element methods for numerically approximating the solution of surface partial differential equations using bulk finite elements. The key idea is that the $n$-dimensional hypersurface, $Gamma subset mathbb{R}^{n+1}$, is embedded in a polyhedral domain in $mathbb R^{n+1}$ consisting of a union, $mathcal{T}_h$, of $(n+1)$-simplices. The finite element approximating space is based on continuous piece-wise linear finite element functions on $mathcal{T}_h$. Our first method is a sharp interface method, emph{SIF}, which uses the bulk finite element space in an approximating weak formulation obtained from integration on a polygonal approximation, $Gamma_{h}$, of $Gamma$. The full gradient is used rather than the projected tangential gradient and it is this which distinguishes emph{SIF} from the method of [42]. The second method, emph{NBM}, is a narrow band method in which the region of integration is a narrow band of width $O(h)$. emph{NBM} is similar to the method of [13]. but again the full gradient is used in the discrete weak formulation. The a priori error analysis in this paper shows that the methods are of optimal order in the surface $L^{2}$ and $H^{1}$ norms and have the advantage that the normal derivative of the discrete solution is small and converges to zero. Our third method combines bulk finite elements, discrete sharp interfaces and narrow bands in order to give an unfitted finite element method for parabolic equations on evolving surfaces. We show that our method is conservative so that it preserves mass in the case of an advection diffusion conservation law. Numerical results are given which illustrate the rates of convergence.