Rational Approximations in Robust Preconditioning of Multiphysics Problems

Multiphysics or multiscale problems naturally involve coupling at interfaces which are manifolds of lower dimensions. The block-diagonal preconditioning of the related saddle-point systems is among the most efficient approaches for numerically solving large-scale problems in this class. At the operator level, the interface blocks of the preconditioners are fractional Laplacians. At the discrete level, we propose to replace the inverse of the fractional Laplacian with its best uniform rational approximation (BURA). The goal of the paper is to develop a unified framework for analysis of the new class of preconditioned iterative methods. As a final result, we prove that the proposed preconditioners have optimal computational complexity O ( N ) , where N is the number of unknowns (degrees of freedom) of the coupled discrete problem. The main theoretical contribution is the condition number estimates of the BURA-based preconditioners. It is important to note that the obtained estimates are completely analogous for both positive and negative fractional powers. At the end, the analysis of the behavior of the relative condition numbers is aimed at characterizing the practical requirements for minimal BURA orders for the considered Darcy–Stokes and 3D–1D examples of coupled problems.