Fast, higher-order direct/iterative hybrid solver for scattering by Inhomogeneous media -- with application to high-frequency and discontinuous refractivity problems

This paper presents a fast high-order method for the solution of two-dimensional problems of scattering by penetrable inhomogeneous media, with application to high-frequency configurations containing (possibly) discontinuous refractivities. The method relies on a combination of a differential volumetric formulation and a boundary integral formulation. Thus, in the proposed approach the entire computational domain is partitioned into large numbers of volumetric spectral approximation patches which are then grouped into patch subsets for local direct solution; the interactions with the exterior domain are handled by means of a boundary integral equation. The resulting algorithm can be quite effective: after a modestly-demanding precomputation stage (whose results for a given frequency can be repeatedly used for arbitrarily chosen incidence angles), the proposed algorithm can accurately evaluate scattering by configurations including large and complex objects and/or high refractivity contrasts, including possibly refractive-index discontinuities, in fast single-core runs