Parallel Auxiliary Space AMG Solver for $H(div)$ Problems

In this paper we present a family of scalable preconditioners for matrices arising in the discretization of $H(div)$ problems using the lowest order Raviart--Thomas finite elements. Our approach belongs to the class of “auxiliary space''--based methods and requires only the finite element stiffness matrix plus some minimal additional discretization information about the topology and orientation of mesh entities. We provide a detailed algebraic description of the theory, parallel implementation, and different variants of this parallel auxiliary space divergence solver (ADS) and discuss its relations to the Hiptmair--Xu (HX) auxiliary space decomposition of $H(div)$ [SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 45 (2007), pp. 2483--2509] and to the auxiliary space Maxwell solver AMS [J. Comput. Math., 27 (2009), pp. 604--623]. An extensive set of numerical experiments demonstrates the robustness and scalability of our implementation on large-scale $H(div)$ problems with large jumps in the material coefficients.