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