A note on skewcirculant preconditioners for elliptic problems (Q1200535)

The numerical solution of linear boundary value problems of elliptic type leads to linear systems of the form \(Ax=b\) whose matrices are symmetric and positive definite. Instead of the original systems transformed systems \(M^{-1}Ax=M^{-1}b\) with a positive definite matrix \(M\) are solved and the condition number \(\kappa(M^{-1}A)\) is minimized. In this paper the author investigates simple 1D and 2D elliptic problems on \([0,1]\) and \([0,1]\times[0,1]\), respectively, with Dirichlet boundary conditions. The preconditioner \(M\) is sought in the class of skewcirculant matrices. [In a recent paper of \textit{R. H. Chan} and \textit{T. F. Chan}: Circulant preconditioners for elliptic problems. J. Numer. Linear Algebra Appl. (to appear), circulant matrices as preconditioners are used.] It is proved that \(\kappa(M^{-1}A)\leq (c_{\text{max}}/c_{\text{min}})^ 2(n+1)\) where \(c_{\text{max}}\) and \(c_{\text{min}}\) denote the upper and lower bound of the coefficients respectively. In a special case (the coefficients equal 1) the condition number equals \(n+1\). The results are elegantly formulated and proved. A numerical test concludes the paper.