A Simple Formula for the Generalized Spectrum of Second Order Self-Adjoint Differential Operators

SIAM Review, Volume 66, Issue 1, Page 125-146, February 2024.
We analyze the spectrum of the operator $\Delta^{-1} [\nabla \cdot (K\nabla u)]$ subject to homogeneous Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, where $\Delta$ denotes the Laplacian and $K=K(x,y)$ is a symmetric tensor. Our main result shows that this spectrum can be derived from the spectral decomposition $K=Q \Lambda Q^T$, where $Q=Q(x,y)$ is an orthogonal matrix and $\Lambda=\Lambda(x,y)$ is a diagonal matrix. More precisely, provided that $K$ is continuous, the spectrum equals the convex hull of the ranges of the diagonal function entries of $\Lambda$. The domain involved is assumed to be bounded and Lipschitz. In addition to studying operators defined on infinite-dimensional Sobolev spaces, we also report on recent results concerning their discretized finite-dimensional counterparts. More specifically, even though $\Delta^{-1} [\nabla \cdot (K\nabla u)]$ is not compact, it turns out that every point in the spectrum of this operator can, to an arbitrary accuracy, be approximated by eigenvalues of the associated generalized algebraic eigenvalue problems arising from discretizations. Our theoretical investigations are illuminated by numerical experiments. The results presented in this paper extend previous analyses which have addressed elliptic differential operators with scalar coefficient functions. Our investigation is motivated by both preconditioning issues (efficient numerical computations) and the need to further develop the spectral theory of second order PDEs (core analysis).