Computing with Functions in Spherical and Polar Geometries I. The Sphere

Alex Townsend, Heather Wilber, Grady B. Wright

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Abstract

A collection of algorithms is described for numerically computing with smooth functions defined on the unit sphere. Functions are approximated to essentially machine precision by using a structure-preserving iterative variant of Gaussian elimination together with the double Fourier sphere method. We show that this procedure allows for stable differentiation, reduces the oversampling of functions near the poles, and converges for certain analytic functions. Operations such as function evaluation, differentiation, and integration are particularly efficient and can be computed by essentially one-dimensional algorithms. A highlight is an optimal complexity direct solver for Poisson's equation on the sphere using a spectral method. Without parallelization, we solve Poisson's equation with $100$ million degrees of freedom in 1 minute on a standard laptop. Numerical results are presented throughout. In a companion paper (part II) we extend the ideas presented here to computing with functions on the disk.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)C403-C425
JournalSIAM Journal on Scientific Computing
Volume38
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Approximation theory
  • Functions
  • Gaussian elimination
  • Low rank approximation

EGS Disciplines

  • Mathematics

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