A Class of Nested Iteration Schemes for Linear Systems with a Coefficient Matrix with a Dominant Positive Definite Symmetric Part

We present a class of nested iteration schemes for solving large sparse systems of linear equations with a coefficient matrix with a dominant symmetric positive definite part. These new schemes are actually inner/outer iterations, which employ the classical conjugate gradient method as inner iteration to approximate each outer iterate, while each outer iteration is induced by a convergent and symmetric positive definite splitting of the coefficient matrix. Convergence properties of the new schemes are studied in depth, possible choices of the inner iteration steps are discussed in detail, and numerical examples from the finite-difference discretization of a second-order partial differential equation are used to further examine the effectiveness and robustness of the new schemes over GMRES and its preconditioned variant. Also, we show that the new schemes are, at least, comparable to the variable-step generalized conjugate gradient method and its preconditioned variant.