A fast Poisson solver for complex geometries (Q1891113)

The paper presents a robust fast solver for the Dirichlet problem \(\Delta u(x) = g(x)\) in \(D\), \(u(x) = f(x)\) on \(\partial D\), where \(D\) is an interior or exterior domain in \(\mathbb{R}^ 2\). The boundary is assumed to be smooth, but it may consist of many components. The method is based on the standard potential theory decomposition and combines fast algorithms for computing volume integrals and evaluating layer potentials on a grid with a fast multipole accelerated integral equation solver. The cost of the authors' method is (asymptotically) just twice that of a standard Poisson solver on a rectangular domain, independent of the complexity of the geometry.