A prewavelet-based algorithm for the solution of second-order elliptic differential equations with variable coefficients on sparse grids

We present a Ritz-Galerkin discretization on sparse grids using prewavelets, which allows us to solve elliptic differential equations with variable coefficients for dimensions d ≥ 2. The method applies multilinear finite elements. We introduce an efficient algorithm for matrix vector multiplication using a Ritz-Galerkin discretization and semi-orthogonality. This algorithm is based on standard 1-dimensional restrictions and prolongations, a simple prewavelet stencil, and the classical operator-dependent stencil for multilinear finite elements. Numerical simulation results are presented for a three-dimensional problem on a curvilinear bounded domain and for a six-dimensional problem with variable coefficients. Simulation results show a convergence of the discretization according to the approximation properties of the finite element space. The condition number of the stiffness matrix can be bounded below 10 using a standard diagonal preconditioner.