Discrete Fourier analysis of multigrid algorithms

The main topic of this report is a detailed discussion of the discrete Fourier multilevel analysis of multigrid algorithms. First, a brief overview of multigrid methods is given for discretizations of both linear and nonlinear partial differential equations. Special attention is given to the hp-Multigrid as Smoother algorithm, which is a new algorithm suitable for higher order accurate discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of advection dominated flows. In order to analyze the performance of the multigrid algorithms the error transformation operator for several linear multigrid algorithms are derived. The operator norm and spectral radius of the multigrid error transformation are then computed using discrete Fourier analysis. First, the main operations in the discrete Fourier analysis are defined, including the aliasing of modes. Next, the Fourier symbol of the multigrid operators is computed and used to obtain the Fourier symbol of the multigrid error transformation operator. In the multilevel analysis, two and three level h-multigrid, both for uniformly and semi-coarsened meshes, are considered, and also the analysis of the hp-Multigrid as Smoother algorithm for three polynomial levels and three uniformly and semi-coarsened meshes. The report concludes with a discussion of the multigrid operator norm and spectral radius. In the appendix some useful auxiliary results are summarized.