Moving-boundary problems solved by adaptive radial basis functions

The objective of this paper is to present an alternative approach to the conventional level set methods for solving two-dimensional moving-boundary problems known as the passive transport. Moving boundaries are associated with time-dependent problems and the position of the boundaries need to be determined as a function of time and space. The level set method has become an attractive design tool for tracking, modeling and simulating the motion of free boundaries in fluid mechanics, combustion, computer animation and image processing. Recent research on the numerical method has focused on the idea of using a meshless methodology for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. In the present approach, the moving interface is captured by the level set method at all time with the zero contour of a smooth function known as the level set function. A new approach is used to solve a convective transport equation for advancing the level set function in time. This new approach is based on the asymmetric meshless collocation method and the adaptive greedy algorithm for trial subspaces selection. Numerical simulations are performed to verify the accuracy and stability of the new numerical scheme which is then applied to simulate a bubble that is moving, stretching and circulating in an ambient flow to demonstrate the performance of the new meshless approach. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Interpolating point spread function anisotropy

Planned wide-field weak lensing surveys are expected to reduce the statistical errors on the shear field to unprecedented levels. In contrast, systematic errors like those induced by the convolution with the point spread function (PSF) will not benefit from that scaling effect and will require very accurate modeling and correction. While numerous methods have been devised to carry out the PSF correction itself, modeling of the PSF shape and its spatial variations across the instrument field of view has, so far, attracted much less attention. This step is nevertheless crucial because the PSF is only known at star positions while the correction has to be performed at any position on the sky. A reliable interpolation scheme is therefore mandatory and a popular approach has been to use low-order bivariate polynomials. In the present paper, we evaluate four other classical spatial interpolation methods based on splines (B-splines), inverse distance weighting (IDW), radial basis functions (RBF) and ordinary Kriging (OK). These methods are tested on the Star-challenge part of the GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing 2010 (GREAT10) simulated data and are compared with the classical polynomial fitting (Polyfit). We also test all our interpolation methods independently of the way the PSF is modeled, by interpolating the GREAT10 star fields themselves (i.e., the PSF parameters are known exactly at star positions). We find in that case RBF to be the clear winner, closely followed by the other local methods, IDW and OK. The global methods, Polyfit and B-splines, are largely behind, especially in fields with (ground-based) turbulent PSFs. In fields with non-turbulent PSFs, all interpolators reach a variance on PSF systematics $\sigma_{sys}^2$ better than the $1\times10^{-7}$ upper bound expected by future space-based surveys, with the local interpolators performing better than the global ones

Partition of unity interpolation using stable kernel-based techniques

In this paper we propose a new stable and accurate approximation technique which is extremely effective for interpolating large scattered data sets. The Partition of Unity (PU) method is performed considering Radial Basis Functions (RBFs) as local approximants and using locally supported weights. In particular, the approach consists in computing, for each PU subdomain, a stable basis. Such technique, taking advantage of the local scheme, leads to a significant benefit in terms of stability, especially for flat kernels. Furthermore, an optimized searching procedure is applied to build the local stable bases, thus rendering the method more efficient