Uniformly Accurate Discontinuous Galerkin Fast Sweeping Methods for Eikonal Equations

Abstract

In [F. Li, C.-W. Shu, Y.-T. Zhang, H. Zhao, Journal of Computational Physics 227 (2008) 8191- 8208], we developed a fast sweeping method based on a hybrid local solver which is a combination of a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element solver and a first order finite difference solver for Eikonal equations. The method has second order accuracy in the L1 norm and a very fast convergence speed, but only first order accuracy in the L∞ norm for the general cases. This is an obstacle to the design of higher order DG fast sweeping methods. In this paper, we overcome this problem by developing uniformly accurate DG fast sweeping methods for solving Eikonal equations. We design novel causality indicators which guide the information flow directions for the DG local solver. The values of these indicators are initially provided by the first order finite difference fast sweeping method, and they are updated during iterations along with the solution. We observe both a uniform second order accuracy in the L∞ norm (in smooth regions) and the fast convergence speed (linear computational complexity) in the numerical examples. Key Words: fast sweeping methods, discontinuous Galerkin methods, uniform accuracy, static Hamilton-Jacobi equations, Eikonal equations