Optimal additive Schwarz preconditioning for hypersingular integral equations on locally refined triangulations (Q2363686)

The authors propose and analyze a reliable and effective method to solve the Laplace equation for bounded polygonal resp. polyhedral Lipschitz domains using a hypersingular integral equation which is solved numerically with the Galerkin boundary element method. They develop appropriate preconditioners for adaptively refined meshes since it is well-known that the condition number of the non-preconditoned Galerkin matrix of the hypersingular integral operator grows with the number of elements and with the quotient of the maximal and minimal mesh-size. The authors consider a local multilevel preconditioner capable of producing optimal preconditioners in the sense that the condition number of the corresponding preconditioned system does not depend on the number of elements, the local mesh-size, and the number of refinement levels. Their theory covers both closed boundaries and open screens in two and three dimensions. Finally, numerical results support their theoretical findings and a thorough comparison with other multilevel schemes as well as techniques that are based on operator preconditioning is provided.