Title: Smoothed Aggregation (SA) multigrid

Speaker: Marian Brezina, University of Colorado at Boulder

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 29, 2005, 3:30-4:30 pm

Location: Building 980, Room 95 (Sandia NM)

Brief Abstract:   Algebraic multilevel methods have been developed to tackle whole classes of problems based on little or no knowledge about the geometrical configuration of the problem solved. This makes them attractive for solving problems for which standard geometric multigrid implementation proves impractical or impossible, such as problems resulting from discretizations over unstructured meshes, problems featuring varying coefficients or problems associated with no meshes at all.  For difficult problems, however, these methods can often take advantage, or even require, additional information about the problem solved. Sometimes, this information takes the form of implicit assumptions. We will discuss ways of relaxing these requirements and enhancing robustness for a particular method, the Smoothed Aggregation (SA) multigrid.

The talk will attempt to describe SA in a self-contained form and is targeted at the audience interested in learning the principles on which SA methods are based. In particular, no prior knowledge of SA will be assumed. We will start by describing SA multigrid and proceed to discuss some of the recent developments and future research and development directions.