A Galerkin method for retarded boundary integral equations with smooth and compactly supported temporal basis functions

We consider retarded boundary integral formulations of the three-dimensional wave equation in unbounded domains. Our goal is to apply a Galerkin method in space and time in order to solve these problems numerically. In this approach the computation of the system matrix entries is the major bottleneck. We will propose new types of finite-dimensional spaces for the time discretization. They allow variable time-stepping, variable order of approximation and simplify the quadrature problem arising in the generation of the system matrix substantially. The reason is that the basis functions of these spaces are globally smooth and compactly supported. In order to perform numerical tests concerning our new basis functions we consider the special case that the boundary of the scattering problem is the unit sphere. In this case explicit solutions of the problem are available which will serve as reference solutions for the numerical experiment

Retarded boundary integral equations on the sphere: exact and numerical solution

In this paper we consider the three-dimensional wave equation in unbounded domains with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We start from a retarded single-layer potential ansatz for the solution of these equations which leads to the retarded potential integral equation on the bounded surface of the scatterer. We formulate an algorithm for the space-time Galerkin discretization with smooth and compactly supported temporal basis functions, which were introduced in Sauter & Veit (2013, Numer. Math., 145-176). For the debugging of an implementation and for systematic parameter tests it is essential to have at hand some explicit representations and some analytic properties of the exact solutions for some special cases. We will derive such explicit representations for the case where the scatterer is the unit ball. The obtained formulas are easy to implement and we will present some numerical experiments for these cases to illustrate the convergence behaviour of the proposed metho

A new boundary element integration strategy for retarded potential boundary integral equations

We consider the retarded potential boundary integral equation, arising from the 3D Dirichlet exterior wave equation problem. For its numerical solution we use compactly supported temporal basis functions in time and a standard collocation method in space. Since the accurate computation of the integrals involved in the numerical scheme is a key issue for the numerical stability, we propose a new efficient and competitive quadrature strategy. We compare this approach with the one that uses the Lubich time convolution quadrature, and show pros and cons of both methods

On a preconditioner for time domain boundary element methods

We propose a time stepping scheme for the space-time systems obtained from Galerkin time-domain boundary element methods for the wave equation. Based on extrapolation, the method proves stable, becomes exact for increasing degrees of freedom and can be used either as a preconditioner, or as an efficient standalone solver for scattering problems with smooth solutions. It also significantly reduces the number of GMRES iterations for screen problems, with less regularity, and we explore its limitations for enriched methods based on non-polynomial approximation spaces.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figure

Fast quadrature techniques for retarded potentials based on TT/QTT tensor approximation

We consider the Galerkin approach for the numerical solution of retarded boundary integral formulations of the three dimensional wave equation in unbounded domains. Recently smooth and compactly supported basis functions in time were introduced which allow the use of standard quadrature rules in order to compute the entries of the boundary element matrix. In this paper we use TT and QTT tensor approximations to increase the effciency of these quadrature rules. Various numerical experiments show the substantial reduction of the computational cost that is needed to obtain accurate approximations for the arising integrals

Convolution spline approximations for time domain boundary integral equations

We introduce a new "convolution spline'' temporal approximation of time domain boundary integral equations (TDBIEs). It shares some properties of convolution quadrature (CQ) but, instead of being based on an underlying ODE solver, the approximation is explicitly constructed in terms of compactly supported basis functions. This results in sparse system matrices and makes it computationally more efficient than using the linear multistep version of CQ for TDBIE time-stepping. We use a Volterra integral equation (VIE) to illustrate the derivation of this new approach: at time step t_n = n\dt the VIE solution is approximated in a backwards-in-time manner in terms of basis functions $\phi_j$ by u(t_n-t) \approx \sum_{j=0}^n u_{n-j}\,\phi_j(t/\dt) for $t \in [0,t_n]$. We show that using isogeometric B-splines of degree $m\ge 1$ on $[0,\infty)$ in this framework gives a second order accurate scheme, but cubic splines with the parabolic runout conditions at $t=0$ are fourth order accurate. We establish a methodology for the stability analysis of VIEs and demonstrate that the new methods are stable for non-smooth kernels which are related to convergence analysis for TDBIEs, including the case of a Bessel function kernel oscillating at frequency \oo(1/\dt). Numerical results for VIEs and for TDBIE problems on both open and closed surfaces confirm the theoretical predictions

Fast Quadrature Techniques for Retarded Potentials Based on TT/QTT Tensor Approximation

We consider the Galerkin approach for the numerical solution of retarded boundary integral formulations of the three dimensional wave equation in unbounded domains. Recently smooth and compactly supported basis functions in time were introduced which allow the use of standard quadrature rules in order to compute the entries of the boundary element matrix. In this paper, we use TT and QTT tensor approximations to increase the efficiency of these quadrature rules. Various numerical experiments show the substantial reduction of the computational cost that is needed to obtain accurate approximations for the arising integral

High-order, Dispersionless "Fast-Hybrid" Wave Equation Solver. Part I: O(1)\mathcal{O}(1) Sampling Cost via Incident-Field Windowing and Recentering

This paper proposes a frequency/time hybrid integral-equation method for the time dependent wave equation in two and three-dimensional spatial domains. Relying on Fourier Transformation in time, the method utilizes a fixed (time-independent) number of frequency-domain integral-equation solutions to evaluate, with superalgebraically-small errors, time domain solutions for arbitrarily long times. The approach relies on two main elements, namely, 1) A smooth time-windowing methodology that enables accurate band-limited representations for arbitrarily-long time signals, and 2) A novel Fourier transform approach which, in a time-parallel manner and without causing spurious periodicity effects, delivers numerically dispersionless spectrally-accurate solutions. A similar hybrid technique can be obtained on the basis of Laplace transforms instead of Fourier transforms, but we do not consider the Laplace-based method in the present contribution. The algorithm can handle dispersive media, it can tackle complex physical structures, it enables parallelization in time in a straightforward manner, and it allows for time leaping---that is, solution sampling at any given time $T$ at $\mathcal{O}(1)$-bounded sampling cost, for arbitrarily large values of $T$, and without requirement of evaluation of the solution at intermediate times. The proposed frequency-time hybridization strategy, which generalizes to any linear partial differential equation in the time domain for which frequency-domain solutions can be obtained (including e.g. the time-domain Maxwell equations), and which is applicable in a wide range of scientific and engineering contexts, provides significant advantages over other available alternatives such as volumetric discretization, time-domain integral equations, and convolution-quadrature approaches.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, revised and extended manuscript (and now including direct comparisons to existing CQ and TDIE solver implementations) (Part I of II