A new method for computing the matrix exponential operation based on vector valued rational approximations

In this paper a new method for computing the action of the matrix exponential on a vector e^Atb, where A is a complex matrix and t is a positive real number, is proposed. Our approach is based on vector valued rational approximation where the approximants are determined by the denominator polynomials whose coefficients are obtained by solving an inexpensive linear least-squares problem. No matrix multiplications or divisions but matrix-vector products are required in the whole process. A technique of scaling and recurrence enables our method to be more effective when the problem is for fixed A,b and many values of t. We also give a backward error analysis in exact arithmetic for the truncation errors to derive our new algorithm. Preliminary numerical results illustrate that the new algorithm performs well.