Shifted HSS preconditioners for the indefinite Helmholtz equation

Abstract: We provide a preconditioning approach for the indefinite Helmholtz equation discretised using finite elements, based upon a Hermitian Skew-Hermitian Splitting (HSS) iteration applied to the shifted operator, and prove that the preconditioner is k- and mesh-robust when O(k) HSS iterations are performed. The HSS iterations involve solving a shifted operator that is suitable for approximation by multigrid using standard smoothers and transfer operators, leading to a fully scalable algorithm. We argue that the algorithm converges in O(k) wallclock time when within the range of scalability of the multigrid. We provide numerical results verifying our proofs and demonstrating this claim. This establishes a scalable O(k) method using multigrid with entirely standard components.