text: We present a solver for the 2D high-frequency Helmholtz equation in heterogeneous acoustic media, with online parallel complexity that scales optimally as @math , where @math is the number of volume unknowns, and @math is the number of processors, as long as @math grows at most like a small fractional power of @math . The solver decomposes the domain into layers, and uses transmission conditions in boundary integral form to explicitly define "polarized traces", i.e., up- and down-going waves sampled at interfaces. Local direct solvers are used in each layer to precompute traces of local Green's functions in an embarrassingly parallel way (the offline part), and incomplete Green's formulas are used to propagate interface data in a sweeping fashion, as a preconditioner inside a GMRES loop (the online part). Adaptive low-rank partitioning of the integral kernels is used to speed up their application to interface data. The method uses second-order finite differences. The complexity scalings are empirical but motivated by an analysis of ranks of off-diagonal blocks of oscillatory integrals. They continue to hold in the context of standard geophysical community models such as BP and Marmousi 2, where convergence occurs in 5 to 10 GMRES iterations.
  @cite_75: We propose a finite element based discretization method in which the standard polynomial field is enriched within each element by a nonconforming field that is added to it. The enrichment contains free-space solutions of the homogeneous differential equation that are not represented by the underlying polynomial field. Continuity of the enrichment across element interfaces is enforced weakly by Lagrange multipliers. In this manner, we expect to attain high coarse-mesh accuracy without significant degradation of conditioning, assuring good performance of the computation at any mesh resolution. Examples of application to acoustics and advection-diffusion are presented.
  @cite_4: We are concerned with a finite element approximation for time-harmonic wave propagation governed by the Helmholtz equation. The usually oscillatory behavior of solutions, along with numerical dispersion, render standard finite element methods grossly inefficient already in medium-frequency regimes. As an alternative, methods that incorporate information about the solution in the form of plane waves have been proposed. We focus on a class of Trefftz-type discontinuous Galerkin methods that employs trial and test spaces spanned by local plane waves. In this paper we give a priori convergence estimates for the h -version of these plane wave discontinuous Galerkin methods in two dimensions. To that end, we develop new inverse and approximation estimates for plane waves and use these in the context of duality techniques. Asymptotic optimality of the method in a mesh dependent norm can be established. However, the estimates require a minimal resolution of the mesh beyond what it takes to resolve the wavelength. We give numerical evidence that this requirement cannot be dispensed with. It reflects the presence of numerical dispersion.
  @cite_25: In this paper, we study the approximation of solutions of the homogeneous Helmholtz equation Δu + ω 2 u = 0 by linear combinations of plane waves with different directions. We combine approximation estimates for homogeneous Helmholtz solutions by generalized harmonic polynomials, obtained from Vekua’s theory, with estimates for the approximation of generalized harmonic polynomials by plane waves. The latter is the focus of this paper. We establish best approximation error estimates in Sobolev norms, which are explicit in terms of the degree of the generalized polynomial to be approximated, the domain size, and the number of plane waves used in the approximations.
summary: Their work spawned a series of new formulations within the framework of Discontinous Galerkin methods, such as the Trefftz formulation of @cite_25 @cite_4 , and the discontinuous enrichment method of @cite_75 ;