Hybrid spherical approximation

In this paper a local approximation method on the sphere is presented. As interpolation scheme we consider a partition of unity method, such as the modified spherical Shepard's method, which uses zonal basis functions (ZBFs) plus spherical harmonics as local approximants. Moreover, a spherical zone algorithm is efficiently implemented, which works well also when the amount of data is very large, since it is based on an optimized searching procedure. Numerical results show good accuracy of the method, also on real geomagnetic data

Spectral Methods for Numerical Relativity. The Initial Data Problem

Numerical relativity has traditionally been pursued via finite differencing. Here we explore pseudospectral collocation (PSC) as an alternative to finite differencing, focusing particularly on the solution of the Hamiltonian constraint (an elliptic partial differential equation) for a black hole spacetime with angular momentum and for a black hole spacetime superposed with gravitational radiation. In PSC, an approximate solution, generally expressed as a sum over a set of orthogonal basis functions (e.g., Chebyshev polynomials), is substituted into the exact system of equations and the residual minimized. For systems with analytic solutions the approximate solutions converge upon the exact solution exponentially as the number of basis functions is increased. Consequently, PSC has a high computational efficiency: for solutions of even modest accuracy we find that PSC is substantially more efficient, as measured by either execution time or memory required, than finite differencing; furthermore, these savings increase rapidly with increasing accuracy. The solution provided by PSC is an analytic function given everywhere; consequently, no interpolation operators need to be defined to determine the function values at intermediate points and no special arrangements need to be made to evaluate the solution or its derivatives on the boundaries. Since the practice of numerical relativity by finite differencing has been, and continues to be, hampered by both high computational resource demands and the difficulty of formulating acceptable finite difference alternatives to the analytic boundary conditions, PSC should be further pursued as an alternative way of formulating the computational problem of finding numerical solutions to the field equations of general relativity.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, revtex, submitted to PR

A multidomain spectral method for solving elliptic equations

We present a new solver for coupled nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs). The solver is based on pseudo-spectral collocation with domain decomposition and can handle one- to three-dimensional problems. It has three distinct features. First, the combined problem of solving the PDE, satisfying the boundary conditions, and matching between different subdomains is cast into one set of equations readily accessible to standard linear and nonlinear solvers. Second, touching as well as overlapping subdomains are supported; both rectangular blocks with Chebyshev basis functions as well as spherical shells with an expansion in spherical harmonics are implemented. Third, the code is very flexible: The domain decomposition as well as the distribution of collocation points in each domain can be chosen at run time, and the solver is easily adaptable to new PDEs. The code has been used to solve the equations of the initial value problem of general relativity and should be useful in many other problems. We compare the new method to finite difference codes and find it superior in both runtime and accuracy, at least for the smooth problems considered here.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figure

A pseudospectral matrix method for time-dependent tensor fields on a spherical shell

We construct a pseudospectral method for the solution of time-dependent, non-linear partial differential equations on a three-dimensional spherical shell. The problem we address is the treatment of tensor fields on the sphere. As a test case we consider the evolution of a single black hole in numerical general relativity. A natural strategy would be the expansion in tensor spherical harmonics in spherical coordinates. Instead, we consider the simpler and potentially more efficient possibility of a double Fourier expansion on the sphere for tensors in Cartesian coordinates. As usual for the double Fourier method, we employ a filter to address time-step limitations and certain stability issues. We find that a tensor filter based on spin-weighted spherical harmonics is successful, while two simplified, non-spin-weighted filters do not lead to stable evolutions. The derivatives and the filter are implemented by matrix multiplication for efficiency. A key technical point is the construction of a matrix multiplication method for the spin-weighted spherical harmonic filter. As example for the efficient parallelization of the double Fourier, spin-weighted filter method we discuss an implementation on a GPU, which achieves a speed-up of up to a factor of 20 compared to a single core CPU implementation.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figure

Natural preconditioners for saddle point systems

The solution of quadratic or locally quadratic extremum problems subject to linear(ized) constraints gives rise to linear systems in saddle point form. This is true whether in the continuous or discrete setting, so saddle point systems arising from discretization of partial differential equation problems such as those describing electromagnetic problems or incompressible flow lead to equations with this structure as does, for example, the widely used sequential quadratic programming approach to nonlinear optimization.\ud This article concerns iterative solution methods for these problems and in particular shows how the problem formulation leads to natural preconditioners which guarantee rapid convergence of the relevant iterative methods. These preconditioners are related to the original extremum problem and their effectiveness -- in terms of rapidity of convergence -- is established here via a proof of general bounds on the eigenvalues of the preconditioned saddle point matrix on which iteration convergence depends

nu=1/2 quantum Hall effect in the Aharonov-Casher geometry in a mesoscopic ring

We study the effect of an electric charge in the middle of a ring of electrons in a magnetic field such as $\nu = 1/2$. In the absence of the central charge, a residual current should appear due to an Aharanov-Bohm effect. As the charge varies, periodic currents should appear in the ring. We evaluate the amplitude of these currents, as well as their period as the central charge varies. The presence of these currents should be a direct signature of the existence of a statistical gauge field in the $\nu=1/2$ quantum Hall effect. Numerical diagonalizations for a small number of electrons on the sphere are also carried out. The numerical results up to 9 electrons are qualitatively consistent with the mean field picture.Comment: 23 pages,14 included postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Orthogonal Polynomials on the Unit Ball and Fourth-Order Partial Differential Equations

The purpose of this work is to analyse a family of mutually orthogonal polynomials on the unit ball with respect to an inner product which includes an additional term on the sphere. First, we will get connection formulas relating classical multivariate orthogonal polynomials on the ball with our family of orthogonal polynomials. Then, using the representation of these polynomials in terms of spherical harmonics, algebraic and differential properties will be deduced

Complex (super)-matrix models with external sources and qq-ensembles of Chern-Simons and ABJ(M) type

The Langmann-Szabo-Zarembo (LSZ) matrix model is a complex matrix model with a quartic interaction and two external matrices. The model appears in the study of a scalar field theory on the non-commutative plane. We prove that the LSZ matrix model computes the probability of atypically large fluctuations in the Stieltjes-Wigert matrix model, which is a $q$-ensemble describing $U(N)$ Chern-Simons theory on the three-sphere. The correspondence holds in a generalized sense: depending on the spectra of the two external matrices, the LSZ matrix model either describes probabilities of large fluctuations in the Chern-Simons partition function, in the unknot invariant or in the two-unknot invariant. We extend the result to supermatrix models, and show that a generalized LSZ supermatrix model describes the probability of atypically large fluctuations in the ABJ(M) matrix model.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures. v2: A correction made and several new results added; title changed. v3: Presentation reorganized, new results and references added, final versio