Algebra preconditionings for 2D Riesz distributed‐order space‐fractional diffusion equations on convex domains

Abstract When dealing with the discretization of differential equations on non‐rectangular domains, a careful treatment of the boundary is mandatory and may result in implementation difficulties and in coefficient matrices without a prescribed structure. Here we examine the numerical solution of a two‐dimensional constant coefficient distributed‐order space‐fractional diffusion equation with a nonlinear term on a convex domain. To avoid the aforementioned inconvenience, we resort to the volume‐penalization method, which consists of embedding the domain into a rectangle and in adding a reaction penalization term to the original equation that dominates in the region outside the original domain and annihilates the solution correspondingly. Thanks to the volume‐penalization, methods designed for problems in rectangular domains are available for those in convex domains and by applying an implicit finite difference scheme we obtain coefficient matrices with a 2‐level Toeplitz structure plus a diagonal matrix which arises from the penalty term. As a consequence of the latter, we can describe the asymptotic eigenvalue distribution as the matrix size diverges as well as estimate the intrinsic asymptotic ill‐conditioning of the involved matrices. On these bases, we discuss the performances of the conjugate gradient with circulant and ‐preconditioners and of the generalized minimal residual with split circulant and ‐preconditioners and conduct related numerical experiments.