A class of nonsymmetric preconditioners for saddle point problems

For iterative solution of saddle point problems, a nonsymmetric preconditioning is studied which, with respect to the upper-left block of the system matrix, can be seen as a variant of SSOR. An idealized situation where the SSOR is taken with respect to the skew-symmetric part plus the diagonal part of the upper-left block is analyzed in detail. Since action of the preconditioner involves solution of a Schur complement system, an inexact form of the preconditioner can be of interest. This results in an inner-outer iterative process. Numerical experiments with solution of linearized Navier-Stokes equations demonstrate efficiency of the new preconditioner, especially when the left-upper block is far from symmetric

MINRES-QLP: a Krylov subspace method for indefinite or singular symmetric systems

CG, SYMMLQ, and MINRES are Krylov subspace methods for solving symmetric systems of linear equations. When these methods are applied to an incompatible system (that is, a singular symmetric least-squares problem), CG could break down and SYMMLQ's solution could explode, while MINRES would give a least-squares solution but not necessarily the minimum-length (pseudoinverse) solution. This understanding motivates us to design a MINRES-like algorithm to compute minimum-length solutions to singular symmetric systems. MINRES uses QR factors of the tridiagonal matrix from the Lanczos process (where R is upper-tridiagonal). MINRES-QLP uses a QLP decomposition (where rotations on the right reduce R to lower-tridiagonal form). On ill-conditioned systems (singular or not), MINRES-QLP can give more accurate solutions than MINRES. We derive preconditioned MINRES-QLP, new stopping rules, and better estimates of the solution and residual norms, the matrix norm, and the condition number.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figure