Fast direct solvers for Poisson equation on 2D polar and spherical geometries

A simple and efficient class of FFT-based fast direct solvers for Poisson equation on 2D polar and spherical geometries is presented. These solvers rely on the truncated Fourier series expansion, where the differential equations of the Fourier coefficients are solved by the second- and fourth-order finite difference discretizations. Using a grid by shifting half mesh away from the origin/poles, and incorporating with the symmetry constraint of Fourier coefficients, the coordinate singularities can be easily handled without pole condition. By manipulating the radial mesh width, three different boundary conditions for polar geometry including Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin conditions can be treated equally well. The new method only needs O(MN log(2) N) arithmetic operations for M x N grid points. (C) 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.