Vorträge

The goal of an a posteriori error analysis for an approximate PDE
solution is to establish the equivalence of error and a posteriori
estimator. Unfortunately, this equivalence is often only up to so-
called oscillation terms.

In this talk we shall clarify the reasons for the presence of
oscillation. Moreover, we propose a new approach to a posteriori error
estimation, where oscillation can be bounded by the error and so does
not longer spoil the aforementioned equivalence.

This is joint work with Christian Kreuzer (Bochum).

We present a space-time discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for linear
wave propagation problems.
The special feature of the scheme is that it is a Trefftz method,
namely that trial and test functions are solution of the partial
differential equation to be discretised in each element of the
(space-time) mesh.
The DG scheme is defined for unstructured meshes whose internal faces
need not be aligned to the space-time axes.
The Trefftz approach can be used to improve and ease the
implementation of explicit schemes based on ``tent-pitched'' meshes.
We show that the scheme is well-posed, quasi-optimal and dissipative,
and prove a priori error bounds for general Trefftz discrete spaces.
A concrete discretisation can be obtained using piecewise polynomials
that satisfy the wave equation elementwise, for which we show high
orders of convergence.
If time allows, we will describe a similar Trefftz-DG method for the
Helmholtz equation, i.e. wave equation in time-harmonic regime, for
which non-polynomial basis functions are used and quite a complete
theory has been established.

Projektarbeit

The evolution of a plasma in external and self-consistent fields is modelled by the Vlasov equation for the distribution function in six dimensional phase space. Due to the high dimensionality and the development of small structures the numerical solution is very challenging. Grid-based methods
for the Vlasov equation have been shown to give accurate results but their use has mostly been limited to simulations in two or four dimensional phase space due to extensive memory requirements in higher dimensions. Compression of the solution via high-order singular value decomposition can help in reducing the storage requirements and the hierarchical Tucker format provides efficient basic linear algebra routines for low-rank representations of tensors.

In this talk, I will present a semi-Lagrangian scheme for the solution of the Vlasov equation represented as a low-parametric tensor. Interpolation formulas for the low-parametric tensor format as well as efficient implementations will be discussed. Numerical simulations for the Vlasov-Poisson equation are shown for the Landau damping test case in two, four, and six dimensional phase space as well as simulations with a constant magnetic field. Depending on the test case, the memory
requirements reduce by a factor $10^2$-$10^3$ in four and a factor $10^5$-$10^6$ in six dimensions compared to the full-grid method.

Auxiliary space preconditioning targets elliptic boundary value problems discetized by means of finite elements. The idea is to use a related discrete boundary value problem, for which efficient solvers are available, as a preconditioner. The connection between both problems is established by means of a suitable prolongation operator.

We apply this strategy to variational problems for the bilinear form $(\alpha(x)\cdot,\cdot)_0+(\beta(x)curl\cdot,curl\cdot)_0$ ($\alpha,\beta$ uniformly positive coefficient functions) posed on the function space $H(curl)$ (or $H_0(curl)$).
These are commonly encountered in magneto-quasistatic models for electromagnetic phenomena (eddy current models). Finite element Galerkin discretization usually relies on Nedelec's $H(curl)$-conforming edge elements, but discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods are a viable option, too. In any case, one faces large sparse linear systems of equations, for which efficient preconditioners are badly needed. Three settings will be discussed:

I) When edge elements are used on a single unstructured mesh, coarser meshes needed for the application of geometric multigrid solvers may not be available. They may be easy to construct, however, for a semi-structured mesh, suggesting the use of an auxiliary edge element space on that mesh.
II) In the same setting as (I), algebraic multigrid methods (AMG) could look promising. Alas, AMG schemes for edge finite element discretizations that match the performance of those for $H^{1}$-conforming finite elements are not available. To harness standard nodal AMG schemes one may use an auxiliary space of continuous piecewise polynomial vectorfields.
III) Using a DG discretization on a standard triangulation, which may be required in the context of magneto-hydrodynamics, an edge element space may serve as auxiliary space.

For all these cases we present theoretical results about the performance of the preconditioner with focus on $h$-independence and robustness with respect to jumps of the coefficients. The main ideas needed to verify the abstract assumptions of the theory of auxiliary space preconditioning will be outlined.