Efficient Direct Space-Time Finite Element Solvers for Parabolic Initial-Boundary Value Problems in Anisotropic Sobolev Spaces

Abstract: We consider a space-time variational formulation of parabolic initial-boundary value problems in anisotropic Sobolev spaces in combination with a Hilbert-type transformation. This variational setting is the starting point for the space-time Galerkin finite element discretization that leads to a large global linear system of algebraic equations. We propose and investigate new efficient direct solvers for this system. In particular, we use a tensor-product approach with piecewise polynomial, globally continuous ansatz and test functions. The developed solvers are based on the Bartels-Stewart method and on the Fast Diagonalization method, which result in solving a sequence of spatial subproblems. The solver based on the Fast Diagonalization method allows to solve these spatial subproblems in parallel leading to a full parallelization in time. We analyze the complexity of the proposed algorithms, and give numerical examples for a two-dimensional spatial domain, where sparse direct solvers for the spatial subproblems are used.