In this letter we compare the behaviour of standard Virtual Element Methods (VEM) and stabilization free Enlarged Enhancement Virtual Element Methods (E$^2$VEM) with the focus on some elliptic test problems whose solution and diffusivity tensor are characterized by anisotropies. Results show that the possibility to avoid an arbitrary stabilizing part, offered by E$^2$VEM methods, can reduce the magnitude of the error on general polygonal meshes and help convergence.
We introduce and analyze various Regularized Combined Field Integral Equations (CFIER) formulations of time-harmonic Navier equations in media with piece-wise constant material properties. These formulations can be derived systematically starting from suitable coercive approximations of Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators (DtN), and we present a periodic pseudodifferential calculus framework within which the well posedness of CIER formulations can be established. We also use the DtN approximations to derive and analyze Optimized Schwarz (OS) methods for the solution of elastodynamics transmission problems. The pseudodifferential calculus we develop in this paper relies on careful singularity splittings of the kernels of Navier boundary integral operators which is also the basis of high-order Nystr\"om quadratures for their discretizations. Based on these high-order discretizations we investigate the rate of convergence of iterative solvers applied to CFIER and OS formulations of scattering and transmission problems. We present a variety of numerical results that illustrate that the CFIER methodology leads to important computational savings over the classical CFIE one, whenever iterative solvers are used for the solution of the ensuing discretized boundary integral equations. Finally, we show that the OS methods are competitive in the high-frequency high-contrast regime.
In this paper we get error bounds for fully discrete approximations of infinite horizon problems via the dynamic programming approach. It is well known that considering a time discretization with a positive step size $h$ an error bound of size $h$ can be proved for the difference between the value function (viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation corresponding to the infinite horizon) and the value function of the discrete time problem. However, including also a spatial discretization based on elements of size $k$ an error bound of size $O(k/h)$ can be found in the literature for the error between the value functions of the continuous problem and the fully discrete problem. In this paper we revise the error bound of the fully discrete method and prove, under similar assumptions to those of the time discrete case, that the error of the fully discrete case is in fact $O(h+k)$ which gives first order in time and space for the method. This error bound matches the numerical experiments of many papers in the literature in which the behaviour $1/h$ from the bound $O(k/h)$ have not been observed.
We introduce a filtering technique for Discontinuous Galerkin approximations of hyperbolic problems. Following an approach already proposed for the Hamilton-Jacobi equations by other authors, we aim at reducing the spurious oscillations that arise in presence of discontinuities when high order spatial discretizations are employed. This goal is achieved using a filter function that keeps the high order scheme when the solution is regular and switches to a monotone low order approximation if it is not. The method has been implemented in the framework of the $deal.II$ numerical library, whose mesh adaptation capabilities are also used to reduce the region in which the low order approximation is used. A number of numerical experiments demonstrate the potential of the proposed filtering technique.
This paper focuses on stochastic saddle point problems with decision-dependent distributions. These are problems whose objective is the expected value of a stochastic payoff function, where random variables are drawn from a distribution induced by a distributional map. For general distributional maps, the problem of finding saddle points is in general computationally burdensome, even if the distribution is known. To enable a tractable solution approach, we introduce the notion of equilibrium points -- which are saddle points for the stationary stochastic minimax problem that they induce -- and provide conditions for their existence and uniqueness. We demonstrate that the distance between the two solution types is bounded provided that the objective has a strongly-convex-strongly-concave payoff and a Lipschitz continuous distributional map. We develop deterministic and stochastic primal-dual algorithms and demonstrate their convergence to the equilibrium point. In particular, by modeling errors emerging from a stochastic gradient estimator as sub-Weibull random variables, we provide error bounds in expectation and in high probability that hold for each iteration. Moreover, we show convergence to a neighborhood almost surely. Finally, we investigate a condition on the distributional map -- which we call opposing mixture dominance -- that ensures that the objective is strongly-convex-strongly-concave. We tailor the convergence results for the primal-dual algorithms to this opposing mixture dominance setup.
Multigrid is a powerful solver for large-scale linear systems arising from discretized partial differential equations. The convergence theory of multigrid methods for symmetric positive definite problems has been well developed over the past decades, while, for nonsymmetric problems, such theory is still not mature. As a foundation for multigrid analysis, two-grid convergence theory plays an important role in motivating multigrid algorithms. Regarding two-grid methods for nonsymmetric problems, most previous works focus on the spectral radius of iteration matrix or rely on convergence measures that are typically difficult to compute in practice. Moreover, the existing results are confined to two-grid methods with exact solution of the coarse-grid system. In this paper, we analyze the convergence of a two-grid method for nonsymmetric positive definite problems (e.g., linear systems arising from the discretizations of convection-diffusion equations). In the case of exact coarse solver, we establish an elegant identity for characterizing two-grid convergence factor, which is measured by a smoother-induced norm. The identity can be conveniently used to derive a class of optimal restriction operators and analyze how the convergence factor is influenced by restriction. More generally, we present some convergence estimates for an inexact variant of the two-grid method, in which both linear and nonlinear coarse solvers are considered.
We study a class of enriched unfitted finite element or generalized finite element methods (GFEM) to solve a larger class of interface problems, that is, 1D elliptic interface problems with discontinuous solutions, including those having implicit or Robin-type interface jump conditions. The major challenge of GFEM development is to construct enrichment functions that capture the imposed discontinuity of the solution while keeping the condition number from fast growth. The linear stable generalized finite element method (SGFEM) was recently developed using one enrichment function. We generalized it to an arbitrary degree using two simple discontinuous one-sided enrichment functions. Optimal order convergence in the $L^2$ and broken $H^1$-norms are established. So is the optimal order convergence at all nodes. To prove the efficiency of the SGFEM, the enriched linear, quadratic, and cubic elements are applied to a multi-layer wall model for drug-eluting stents in which zero-flux jump conditions and implicit concentration interface conditions are both present.
The numerical solution of singular eigenvalue problems is complicated by the fact that small perturbations of the coefficients may have an arbitrarily bad effect on eigenvalue accuracy. However, it has been known for a long time that such perturbations are exceptional and standard eigenvalue solvers, such as the QZ algorithm, tend to yield good accuracy despite the inevitable presence of roundoff error. Recently, Lotz and Noferini quantified this phenomenon by introducing the concept of $\delta$-weak eigenvalue condition numbers. In this work, we consider singular quadratic eigenvalue problems and two popular linearizations. Our results show that a correctly chosen linearization increases $\delta$-weak eigenvalue condition numbers only marginally, justifying the use of these linearizations in numerical solvers also in the singular case. We propose a very simple but often effective algorithm for computing well-conditioned eigenvalues of a singular quadratic eigenvalue problems by adding small random perturbations to the coefficients. We prove that the eigenvalue condition number is, with high probability, a reliable criterion for detecting and excluding spurious eigenvalues created from the singular part.
This article presents an in-depth review of the topic of path following for autonomous robotic vehicles, with a specific focus on vehicle motion in two dimensional space (2D). From a control system standpoint, path following can be formulated as the problem of stabilizing a path following error system that describes the dynamics of position and possibly orientation errors of a vehicle with respect to a path, with the errors defined in an appropriate reference frame. In spite of the large variety of path following methods described in the literature we show that, in principle, most of them can be categorized in two groups: stabilization of the path following error system expressed either in the vehicle's body frame or in a frame attached to a "reference point" moving along the path, such as a Frenet-Serret (F-S) frame or a Parallel Transport (P-T) frame. With this observation, we provide a unified formulation that is simple but general enough to cover many methods available in the literature. We then discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method, comparing them from the design and implementation standpoint. We further show experimental results of the path following methods obtained from field trials testing with under-actuated and fully-actuated autonomous marine vehicles. In addition, we introduce open-source Matlab and Gazebo/ROS simulation toolboxes that are helpful in testing path following methods prior to their integration in the combined guidance, navigation, and control systems of autonomous vehicles.
We present a pipelined multiplier with reduced activities and minimized interconnect based on online digit-serial arithmetic. The working precision has been truncated such that $p<n$ bits are used to compute $n$ bits product, resulting in significant savings in area and power. The digit slices follow variable precision according to input, increasing upto $p$ and then decreases according to the error profile. Pipelining has been done to achieve high throughput and low latency which is desirable for compute intensive inner products. Synthesis results of the proposed designs have been presented and compared with the non-pipelined online multiplier, pipelined online multiplier with full working precision and conventional serial-parallel and array multipliers. For $8, 16, 24$ and $32$ bit precision, the proposed low power pipelined design show upto $38\%$ and $44\%$ reduction in power and area respectively compared to the pipelined online multiplier without working precision truncation.
This book develops an effective theory approach to understanding deep neural networks of practical relevance. Beginning from a first-principles component-level picture of networks, we explain how to determine an accurate description of the output of trained networks by solving layer-to-layer iteration equations and nonlinear learning dynamics. A main result is that the predictions of networks are described by nearly-Gaussian distributions, with the depth-to-width aspect ratio of the network controlling the deviations from the infinite-width Gaussian description. We explain how these effectively-deep networks learn nontrivial representations from training and more broadly analyze the mechanism of representation learning for nonlinear models. From a nearly-kernel-methods perspective, we find that the dependence of such models' predictions on the underlying learning algorithm can be expressed in a simple and universal way. To obtain these results, we develop the notion of representation group flow (RG flow) to characterize the propagation of signals through the network. By tuning networks to criticality, we give a practical solution to the exploding and vanishing gradient problem. We further explain how RG flow leads to near-universal behavior and lets us categorize networks built from different activation functions into universality classes. Altogether, we show that the depth-to-width ratio governs the effective model complexity of the ensemble of trained networks. By using information-theoretic techniques, we estimate the optimal aspect ratio at which we expect the network to be practically most useful and show how residual connections can be used to push this scale to arbitrary depths. With these tools, we can learn in detail about the inductive bias of architectures, hyperparameters, and optimizers.