A new iterative Chebyshev spectral method for solving the elliptic equation \(\nabla\cdot(\sigma\nabla u)=f\) (Q1335638)

A new Chebyshev spectral method for solving elliptic problems is presented. The equation is rewritten in the form of a Poisson equation. Then the iterative method is obtained. The Poisson problem is solved by a direct matrix diagonalization technique. For some examples it is shown that for the same number of iterations the present method is about 6-8 orders more accurate than the standard spectral multigrid method. In the cases of a strongly discontinuous or variable coefficient the method will not work. Then one has to use a multidomain Chebyshev spectral method. For general problems the Chebyshev spectral multigrid method is still superior.