Solving the Helmholtz equation has important applications in various areas, such as acoustics and electromagnetics. Using an iterative solver together with a proper preconditioner is key for solving large 3D Helmholtz equations. The performance of existing Helmholtz preconditioners usually deteriorates when the minimum spatial sampling density is small (approximately four points per wavelength [PPW]). To improve the efficiency of the Helmholtz preconditioner at a small minimum spatial sampling density, we have adopted a new preconditioner. In our scheme, the preconditioning matrix is constructed based on an adaptive complex frequency that varies with the minimum spatial sampling density in terms of the number of PPWs. Furthermore, the multigrid V-cycle with a GMRES smoother is adopted to effectively solve the corresponding preconditioning linear system. The adaptive complex frequency together with a GMRES smoother can work stably and efficiently at different minimum spatial sampling densities. Numerical results of three typical 3D models show that our scheme is more efficient than the multilevel GMRES method and shifted Laplacian with multigrid full V-cycle and a symmetric Gauss-Seidel smoother for preconditioning the 3D Helmholtz linear system, especially when the minimum spatial sampling density is large (approximately 120 PPW) or small (approximately 4 PPW).
Implementation of the GMRES Method Using Householder Transformations