GMRES as a multi-step transport sweep accelerator (Q4262897)

The authors exhibit that applying the Generalized Minimal RESidual (GMRES) algorithm to the system that results from sweeps type iterative solvers for the neutral particle transport equation, including diffusion synthetic acceleration method, is equivalent to finding a linear combination of sweeps iterates that minimize an estimate of the error in the solution. This provides an accelerator that can in principle be applied to any standard sweeps based algorithm. This accelerator is tested on a variety of one-group transport problems of varying scattering ratio and optical thickness. These results reveal that GMRES can reduce the number of sweeps required of the simple sweeps method. Unlike a direct application of GMRES to the integro-differential form of the transport equation, which requires storage for several angular fluxes, the approach described here requires storage only for scalar fluxes in the case of isotropic scattering, or more generally only for those flux moments required for the order of scattering being used.