Convergence estimates for multigrid algorithms with SSC smoothers and applications to overlapping domain decomposition

In this paper we study convergence estimates for a multigrid algorithm with smoothers of successive subspace correction (SSC) type, applied to symmetric elliptic PDEs under no regularity assumptions on the solution of the problem. The proposed analysis provides three main contributions to the existing theory. The first novel contribution of this study is a convergence bound that depends on the number of multigrid smoothing iterations. This result is obtained under no regularity assumptions on the solution of the problem. A similar result has been shown in the literature for the cases of full regularity and partial regularity assumptions. Second, our theory applies to local refinement applications with arbitrary level hanging nodes. More specifically, for the smoothing algorithm we provide subspace decompositions that are suitable for applications where the multigrid spaces are defined on finite element grids with arbitrary level hanging nodes. Third, global smoothing is employed on the entire multigrid space with hanging nodes. When hanging nodes are present, existing multigrid strategies advise to carry out the smoothing procedure only on a subspace of the multigrid space that does not contain hanging nodes. However, with such an approach, if the number of smoothing iterations is increased, convergence can improve only up to a saturation value. Global smoothing guarantees an arbitrary improvement in the convergence when the number of smoothing iterations is increased. Numerical results are also included to support our theoretical findings.