A Fast Solver For The Fractional Helmholtz Equation

The purpose of this paper is to study a Helmholtz problem with a spectral fractional Laplacian, instead of the standard Laplacian. Recently, it has been established that such a fractional Helmholtz problem better captures the underlying behavior in geophysical electromagnetics. We establish the well-posedness and regularity of this problem. We introduce a hybrid spectral-finite element approach to discretize it and show well-posedness of the discrete system. In addition, we derive a priori discretization error estimates. Finally, we introduce an efficient solver that scales as well as the best possible solver for the classical integer-order Helmholtz equation. We conclude with several illustrative examples that confirm our theoretical findings.