Uniform convergence of the multigrid V-cycle for an anisotropic problem (Q2701544)

The linear systems arising from the standard finite element discretizations of certain second-order anisotropic problems with variable coefficients on a rectangle are considered. The performance of a V-cycle multigrid method applied to the finite element equations is studied and a modification of the theory of \textit{D. Braess} and \textit{W. Hackbusch} [SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 20, 967-975 (1983; Zbl 0521.65079)] is presented.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEIt is shown that the V-cycle multigrid iteration with a line smoother is a uniform contraction in the energy norm. In the verification of the hypotheses in this theory, a weighted \(L^2\)-norm estimate for the error in the Galerkin finite element approximation and a smoothing property of the line smoothers is applied and proved in this paper.