This paper rigorously analyses preconditioners for the time-harmonic Maxwell equations with absorption, where the PDE is discretised using curl-conforming finite-element methods of fixed, arbitrary order and the preconditioner is constructed using additive Schwarz domain decomposition methods. The theory developed here shows that if the absorption is large enough, and if the subdomain and coarse mesh diameters and overlap are chosen appropriately, then the classical two-level overlapping additive Schwarz preconditioner (with PEC boundary conditions on the subdomains) performs optimally--in the sense that GMRES converges in a wavenumber-independent number of iterations--for the problem with absorption. An important feature of the theory is that it allows the coarse space to be built from low-order elements even if the PDE is discretised using high-order elements. It also shows that additive methods with minimal overlap can be robust. Numerical experiments are given that illustrate the theory and its dependence on various parameters. These experiments motivate some extensions of the preconditioners which have better robustness for problems with less absorption, including the propagative case. At the end of the paper we illustrate the performance of these on two substantial applications; the first (a problem with absorption arising from medical imaging) shows the empirical robustness of the preconditioner against heterogeneity, and the second (scattering by a COBRA cavity) shows good scalability of the preconditioner with up to 3,000 processors.

Efficient frequency-domain full-waveform inversion (FWI) of long-offset node data can be designed with a few discrete frequencies, which lead to modest data volumes to be managed during the inversion process. Moreover, attenuation effects can be straightforwardly implemented in the forward problem without computational overhead. However, 3D frequency-domain seismic modeling is challenging because it requires solving a large and sparse linear indefinite system for each frequency with multiple right-hand sides (RHSs). This linear system can be solved by direct or iterative methods. The former allows efficient processing of multiple RHSs but may suffer from limited scalability for very large problems. Iterative methods equipped with a domain-decomposition preconditioner provide a suitable alternative to process large computational domains for sparse-node acquisition. We have investigated the domain-decomposition preconditioner based on the optimized restricted additive Schwarz (ORAS) method, in which a Robin or perfectly matched layer condition is implemented at the boundaries between the subdomains. The preconditioned system is solved by a Krylov subspace method, whereas a block low-rank lower-upper decomposition of the local matrices is performed at a preprocessing stage. Multiple sources are processed in groups with a pseudoblock method. The accuracy, the computational cost, and the scalability of the ORAS solver are assessed against several realistic benchmarks. In terms of discretization, we compare a compact wavelength-adaptive 27-point finite-difference stencil on a regular Cartesian grid with a P3 finite-element method on h-adaptive tetrahedral mesh. Although both schemes have comparable accuracy, the former is more computationally efficient, the latter being beneficial to comply with known boundaries such as bathymetry. The scalability of the method, the block processing of multiple RHSs, and the straightforward implementation of attenuation, which further improves the convergence of the iterative solver, make the method a versatile forward engine for large-scale 3D FWI applications from sparse node data sets.

Electronic Transactions on Numerical Analysis (ETNA) is an electronic journal for the publication of significant new developments in numerical analysis and scientific computing. Papers of the highest quality that deal with the analysis of algorithms for the solution of continuous models and numerical linear algebra are appropriate for ETNA, as are papers of similar quality that discuss implementation and performance of such algorithms. New algorithms for current or new computer architectures are appropriate provided that they are numerically sound. However, the focus of the publication should be on the algorithm rather than on the architecture. The journal is published by the Kent State University Library in conjunction with the Institute of Computational Mathematics at Kent State University, and in cooperation with the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (RICAM). Reviews of all ETNA papers appear in Mathematical Reviews and Zentralblatt für Mathematik. Reference information for ETNA papers also appears in the expanded Science Citation Index. ETNA is registered with the Library of Congress and has ISSN 1068-9613.