Quasi-optimal nonconforming methods for symmetric elliptic problems. I -- Abstract theory

We consider nonconforming methods for symmetric elliptic problems and characterize their quasi-optimality in terms of suitable notions of stability and consistency. The quasi-optimality constant is determined and the possible impact of nonconformity on its size is quantified by means of two alternative consistency measures. Identifying the structure of quasi-optimal methods, we show that their construction reduces to the choice of suitable linear operators mapping discrete functions to conforming ones. Such smoothing operators are devised in the forthcoming parts of this work for various finite element spaces

Time-parallel iterative solvers for parabolic evolution equations

We present original time-parallel algorithms for the solution of the implicit Euler discretization of general linear parabolic evolution equations with time-dependent self-adjoint spatial operators. Motivated by the inf-sup theory of parabolic problems, we show that the standard nonsymmetric time-global system can be equivalently reformulated as an original symmetric saddle-point system that remains inf-sup stable with respect to the same natural parabolic norms. We then propose and analyse an efficient and readily implementable parallel-in-time preconditioner to be used with an inexact Uzawa method. The proposed preconditioner is non-intrusive and easy to implement in practice, and also features the key theoretical advantages of robust spectral bounds, leading to convergence rates that are independent of the number of time-steps, final time, or spatial mesh sizes, and also a theoretical parallel complexity that grows only logarithmically with respect to the number of time-steps. Numerical experiments with large-scale parallel computations show the effectiveness of the method, along with its good weak and strong scaling properties

Quasi-optimal nonconforming methods for symmetric elliptic problems. I—abstract theory

We consider nonconforming methods for symmetric elliptic problems and characterize their quasi-optimality in terms of suitable notions of stability and consistency. The quasi-optimality constant is determined, and the possible impact of nonconformity on its size is quantified by means of two alternative consistency measures. Identifying the structure of quasi-optimal methods, we show that their construction reduces to the choice of suitable linear operators mapping discrete functions to conforming ones. Such smoothing operators are devised in the forthcoming parts of this work for various finite element spaces

Quasi-best approximation in optimization with PDE constraints

We consider finite element solutions to quadratic optimization problems, where the state depends on the control via a well-posed linear partial differential equation. Exploiting the structure of a suitably reduced optimality system, we prove that the combined error in the state and adjoint state of the variational discretization is bounded by the best approximation error in the underlying discrete spaces. The constant in this bound depends on the inverse square-root of the Tikhonov regularization parameter. Furthermore, if the operators of control-action and observation are compact, this quasibest-approximation constant becomes independent of the Tikhonov parameter as the meshsize tends to 0 and we give quantitative relationships between meshsize and Tikhonov parameter ensuring this independence. We also derive generalizations of these results when the control variable is discretized or when it is taken from a convex set

Time-Parallel Iterative Solvers for Parabolic Evolution Equations

We present original time-parallel algorithms for the solution of the implicit Euler discretization of general linear parabolic evolution equations with time-dependent self-adjoint spatial operators. Motivated by the inf-sup theory of parabolic problems, we show that the standard nonsymmetric time-global system can be equivalently reformulated as an original symmetric saddlepoint system that remains inf-sup stable with respect to the same natural parabolic norms. We then propose and analyse an efficient and readily implementable parallel-in-time preconditioner to be used with an inexact Uzawa method. The proposed preconditioner is non-intrusive and easy to implement in practice, and also features the key theoretical advantages of robust spectral bounds, leading to convergence rates that are independent of the number of time-steps, final time, or spatial mesh sizes, and also a theoretical parallel complexity that grows only logarithmically with respect to the number of time-steps. Numerical experiments with large-scale parallel computations show the effectiveness of the method, along with its good weak and strong scaling properties