Timo Betcke

• DPhil
• Professor (Full) at University College London

Many important partial differential equation problems in homogeneous media, such as those of acoustic or electromagnetic wave propagation, can be represented in the form of integral equations on the boundary of the domain of interest. In order to solve such problems, the boundary element method (BEM) can be applied. The advantage compared to domain...

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a noninvasive imaging modality, where imperceptible currents are applied to the skin and the resulting surface voltages are measured. It has the potential to distinguish between ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke with a portable and inexpensive device. The image reconstruction relies on an accurate forward mo...

Understanding the spectral properties of boundary integral operators in acoustic scattering has important practical implications, such as for the analysis of the stability of boundary element discretizations or the convergence of iterative solvers as the wave number k grows. Yet, little is known about spectral decompositions of the standard boundar...

In recent years nonpolynomial finite element methods have received increasing attention for the efficient solution of wave problems. As with their close cousin the method of particular solutions, high efficiency comes from using solutions to the Helmholtz equation as basis functions. We present and analyze such a method for the scattering of two-di...

The Poisson-Boltzmann equation is widely used to model electrostatics in molecular systems. Available software packages solve it using finite difference, finite element, and boundary element methods, where the latter is attractive due to the accurate representation of the molecular surface and partial charges, and exact enforcement of the boundary...

The Poisson-Boltzmann equation is widely used to model electrostatics in molecular systems. Available software packages solve it using finite difference, finite element, and boundary element methods, where the latter is attractive due to the accurate representation of the molecular surface and partial charges, and exact enforcement of the boundary...

The Poisson--Boltzmann equation is widely used to model electrostatics in molecular systems. Available software packages solve it using finite difference, finite element, and boundary element methods, where the latter is attractive due to the accurate representation of the molecular surface and partial charges, and exact enforcement of the boundary...

The Electric Field Integral Equation (EFIE) is a well-established tool to solve electromagnetic scattering problems. However, the development of efficient and easy to implement preconditioners remains an active research area. In recent years, operator preconditioning approaches have become popular for the EFIE, where the electric field boundary int...

We consider boundary element methods where the Calderón projector is used for the system matrix and boundary conditions are weakly imposed using a particular variational boundary operator designed using techniques from augmented Lagrangian methods. Regardless of the boundary conditions, both the primal trace variable and the flux are approximated....

The scattering and transmission of harmonic acoustic waves at a penetrable material are commonly modelled by a set of Helmholtz equations. This system of partial differential equations can be rewritten into boundary integral equations defined at the surface of the objects and solved with the boundary element method (BEM). High frequencies or geomet...

In this paper, we discuss a hybridised method for FEM-BEM coupling. The coupling from both sides use a Nitsche-type approach to couple to the trace variable. This leads to a formulation that is robust and flexible with respect to approximation spaces and can easily be combined as a building block with other hybridised methods. Energy error norm est...

We investigate a range of techniques for the acceleration of Calderón (operator) preconditioning in the context of boundary integral equation methods for electromagnetic transmission problems. Our objective is to mitigate as far as possible the high computational cost of the barycentrically-refined meshes necessary for the stable discretisation of...

The boundary element method is an efficient algorithm for simulating acoustic propagation through homogeneous objects embedded in free space. The conditioning of the system matrix strongly depends on physical parameters such as density, wavespeed and frequency. In particular, high contrast in density and wavespeed across a material interface leads...

The boundary element method (BEM) is an efficient numerical method for simulating harmonic wave propagation. It uses boundary integral formulations of the Helmholtz equation at the interfaces of piecewise homogeneous domains. The discretisation of its weak formulation leads to a dense system of linear equations, which is typically solved with an it...

The numerical simulation of weakly nonlinear ultrasound is important in treatment planning for focused ultrasound (FUS) therapies. However, the large domain sizes and generation of higher harmonics at the focus make these problems extremely computationally demanding. Numerical methods typically employ a uniform mesh fine enough to resolve the highe...

In this paper we discuss a hybridised method for FEM-BEM coupling. The coupling from both sides use a Nitsche type approach to couple to the trace variable. This leads to a formulation that is robust and flexible with respect to approximation spaces and can easily be combined as a building block with other hybridised methods. Energy error norm esti...

The Bempp boundary element library is a well known library for the simulation of a range of electrostatic, acoustic and electromagnetic problems in homogeneous bounded and unbounded domains. It originally started as a traditional C++ library with a Python interface. Over the last two years we have completely redesigned Bempp as a native Python libr...

The scattering and transmission of harmonic acoustic waves at a penetrable material are commonly modelled by a set of Helmholtz equations. This system of partial differential equations can be rewritten into boundary integral equations defined at the surface of the objects and solved with the boundary element method (BEM). High frequencies or geomet...

The boundary element method is an efficient algorithm for simulating acoustic propagation through homogeneous objects embedded in free space. The conditioning of the system matrix strongly depends on physical parameters such as density, wavespeed and frequency. In particular, high contrast in density and wavespeed across a material interface leads...

The boundary element method (BEM) is an efficient numerical method for simulating harmonic wave scattering. It uses boundary integral formulations of the Helmholtz equation at the interfaces of piecewise homogeneous domains. The discretisation of its weak formulation leads to a dense system of linear equations, which is typically solved with an ite...

The boundary element method (BEM) is a numerical method for approximating the solution of certain types of partial differential equations (PDEs) in homogeneous bounded or unbounded domains. The method finds an approximation by discretising a boundary integral equation that can be derived from the PDE. The mathematical background of BEM is covered i...

In small room acoustics, the range from the first resonant frequency up to the Schroeder frequency is dominated by modal resonances and the Speaker-Boundary Interference Response (SBIR). Both are very sensitive to the positioning of sources, receivers and room geometry. The source locations determine which modes are excited , and the listener locat...

The numerical simulation of nonlinear ultrasound is important in the treatment planning for high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) therapies in the abdomen. However, the large domain sizes and generation of higher harmonics at the focus make these problems extremely computationally demanding. Numerical methods typically employ a uniform mesh fine...

Therapeutic ultrasound is a promising non-invasive method for inducing various beneficial biological effects in the human body. In cancer treatment applications, high-power ultrasound is focused at a target tissue volume to ablate the malignant tumour. The success of the procedure depends on the ability to accurately focus ultrasound and destroy th...

We investigate a range of techniques for the acceleration of Calder\'on (operator) preconditioning in the context of boundary integral equation methods for electromagnetic transmission problems. Our objective is to mitigate as far as possible the high computational cost of the barycentrically-refined meshes necessary for the stable discretisation o...

We consider boundary element methods where the Calder\'on projector is used for the system matrix and boundary conditions are weakly imposed using a particular variational boundary operator designed using techniques from augmented Lagrangian methods. Regardless of the boundary conditions, both the primal trace variable and the flux are approximated...

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a promising treatment modality for the non-invasive ablation of pathogenic tissue in many organs. Optimal treatment planning strategies based on high-performance computing methods are expected to form a vital component of a successful clinical outcome in which healthy tissue is preserved and accurate focu...

The accurate computation of the electrostatic capacity of three dimensional objects is a fascinating benchmark problem with a long and rich history. In particular, the capacity of the unit cube has widely been studied, and recent advances allow to compute its capacity to more than ten digits of accuracy. However, the accurate computation of the cap...

We consider boundary element methods where the Calderón projector is used for the system matrix and boundary conditions are weakly imposed using a particular variational boundary operator designed using techniques from augmented Lagrangian methods. Regardless of the boundary conditions, both the primal trace variable and the flux are approximated....

We employ domain derivatives to solve inverse electromagnetic scattering problems for perfect conducting or for penetrable obstacles. Using a variational approach, the derivative of the scattered field with respect to boundary variations is characterized as the solution of a boundary value problem of the same type as the original scattering problem...

The accurate computation of the electrostatic capacity of three dimensional objects is a fascinating benchmark problem with a long and rich history. In particular, the capacity of the unit cube has widely been studied, and recent advances allow to compute its capacity to more than ten digits of accuracy. However, the accurate computation of the cap...

We analyze an adaptive boundary element method for the weakly-singular and hypersingular integral equations for the 2D and 3D Helmholtz problem. The proposed adaptive algorithm is steered by a residual error estimator and does not rely on any a priori information that the underlying meshes are sufficiently fine. We prove convergence of the error es...

We consider the simulation of electromagnetic scattering by single and multiple isotropic homogeneous dielectric particles using boundary integral equations. Galerkin discretizations of the classical Poggio-Miller-Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) boundary integral equation formulation provide accurate solutions for complex particle geometries, but...

We consider the simulation of electromagnetic scattering by single and multiple isotropic homogeneous dielectric particles using boundary integral equations. Galerkin discretizations of the classical Poggio-Miller-Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) boundary integral equation formulation provide accurate solutions for complex particle geometries, but...

We analyze an adaptive boundary element method for the weakly-singular and hypersingular integral equations for the 2D and 3D Helmholtz problem. The proposed adaptive algorithm is steered by a residual error estimator and does not rely on any {\sl a priori} information that the underlying meshes are sufficiently fine. %Instead, adaptive mesh-refine...

We analyze an adaptive boundary element method for the weakly-singular and hypersingular integral equations for the 2D and 3D Helmholtz problem. The proposed adaptive algorithm is steered by a residual error estimator and does not rely on any a priori information that the underlying meshes are sufficiently fine. We prove convergence of the error es...

We consider boundary element methods where the Calder\'on projector is used for the system matrix and boundary conditions are weakly imposed using a particular variational boundary operator designed using techniques from augmented Lagrangian methods. Regardless of the boundary conditions, both the primal trace variable and the flux are approximated...

In this paper, we demonstrate how GPU-accelerated BEM routines can be used in a simple black-box fashion to accelerate fast boundary element formulations based on Hierarchical Matrices (H-Matrices) with ACA (Adaptive Cross Approximation). The method is based on offloading the CPU assembly of elements during the ACA assembly onto a GPU device and to...

Operator products occur naturally in a range of regularized boundary integral equation formulations. However, while a Galerkin discretisation only depends on the domain space and the test (or dual) space of the operator, products require a notion of the range. In the boundary element software package Bempp we have implemented a complete operator al...

Operator products occur naturally in a range of regularized boundary integral equation formulations. However, while a Galerkin discretisation only depends on the domain space and the test (or dual) space of the operator, products require a notion of the range. In the boundary element software package Bempp we have implemented a complete operator al...

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) is a promising treatment modality for the non-invasive ablation of pathological tissue in many organs, including the liver. Since many patients are not suitable candidates for liver surgery, the possibility to locally deposit thermal energy in a non-invasive way would bear significant clinical impact. Optima...

In recent years there have been tremendous advances in the theoretical understanding of boundary integral equations for Maxwell problems. In particular, stable dual pairing of discretisation spaces have been developed that allow robust formulations of the preconditioned electric field, magnetic field and combined field integral equations. Within th...

In recent years there have been tremendous advances in the theoretical understanding of boundary integral equations for Maxwell problems. In particular, stable dual pairing of discretisation spaces have been developed that allow robust formulations of the preconditioned electric field, magnetic field and combined field integral equations. Within th...

This chapter presents the application of the boundary element method to high-frequency Helmholtz problems in unbounded domains. Based on a standard combined integral equation approach for sound-hard scattering problems we discuss the discretization, preconditioning and fast evaluation of the involved operators. As engineering problem, the propagati...

Surface Integral Equations are often used to model electromagnetic scattering phenomena. Large-scale problems can efficiently be solved with Boundary Element Methods (BEM) of which the Method of Moments (MoM) has found widespread use in the computational electromagnetics community. The framework of integral equations allows for the design of many d...

Convolution quadrature (CQ) methods have enjoyed tremendous interest in recent years as an efficient tool for solving time-domain wave problems in unbounded domains via boundary integral equation techniques. In this paper we consider CQ type formulations for the parallel space-time evaluation of multistep or stiffly accurate Runge-Kutta rules for t...

Convolution quadrature (CQ) methods have enjoyed tremendous interest in recent years as an efficient tool for solving time-domain wave problems in unbounded domains via boundary integral equation techniques. In this paper we consider CQ type formulations for the parallel space-time evaluation of multistep or stiffly accurate Runge-Kutta rules for t...

High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) techniques are promising modalities for the non-invasive treatment of cancer. For HIFU therapies of, e.g., liver cancer, one of the main challenges is the accurate focusing of the acoustic field inside a ribcage. Computational methods can play an important role in the patient-specific planning of these trans...

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a promising medical imaging technique which could aid differentiation of haemorrhagic from ischaemic stroke in an ambulance. One challenge in EIT is the ill-posed nature of the image reconstruction, i.e. that small measurement or modelling errors can result in large image artefacts. It is therefore important...

We investigate the application of multifrequency electrical impedance tomography (MFEIT) to imaging the brain in stroke patients. The use of MFEIT could enable early diagnosis and thrombolysis of ischaemic stroke, and therefore improve the outcome of treatment. Recent advances in the imaging methodology suggest that the use of spectral constraints...

Nonpolynomial finite element methods for Helmholtz problems have seen much attention in recent years in the engineering and mathematics community. The idea is to use instead of standard polynomials Trefftz-type basis functions that already satisfy the Helmholtz equation, such as plane waves [17], Fourier–Bessel functions [8] or fundamental solution...

The use of the factorization method for electrical impedance tomography has been proved to be very promising for applications in the case where one wants to find inhomogeneous inclusions in a known background. In many situations, the inspected domain is three dimensional and is made of various materials. In this case, the main challenge in applying...

Understanding the spectral properties of boundary integral operators in acoustic scattering has important practical implications, such as for the analysis of the stability of boundary element discretisations or the convergence of iterative solvers as the wavenumber k grows. Yet little is known about spectral decompo- sitions of the standard boundar...

In recent years plane wave approximation methods have become popular for the solution of Helmholtz problems, where instead of standard polynomial basis functions plane waves are used on each element to approximate the solution. One possibility to enforce inter-element continuity conditions for these basis functions is to use the plane wave disconti...

Plane wave methods have become an established tool for the solution of Helmholtz problems in homogeneous media. The idea is to approximate the solution in each element with a linear combination of plane waves, which are roughly equally spaced in all directions. The main advantage of plane wave methods is that they require significantly fewer degree...

Generalizing the notion of an eigenvector, invariant subspaces are frequently used in the context of linear eigenvalue problems, leading to conceptually elegant and numerically stable formulations in applications that require the computation of several eigenvalues and/or eigenvectors. Similar benefits can be expected for polynomial eigenvalue probl...

Generalizing the notion of an eigenvector, invariant subspaces are frequently used in the context of linear eigenvalue problems, leading to conceptually elegant and numerically stable formulations in applications that require the computation of several eigenvalues and/or eigenvectors. Similar benefits can be expected for polynomial eigenvalue probl...

Coercivity is an important concept for proving existence and uniqueness of solutions to variational problems in Hilbert spaces. But while coercivity estimates are well known for many variational problems arising from partial differential equations, they are still an open problem in the context of boundary integral operators arising from acoustic sc...

We consider the classical coupled, combined-field integral equation formulations for time-harmonic acoustic scattering by a sound soft bounded obstacle. In recent work, we have proved lower and upper bounds on the $L^2$ condition numbers for these formulations, and also on the norms of the classical acoustic single- and double-layer potential opera...

We present a collection of 46 nonlinear eigenvalue problems in the form of a MATLAB toolbox. The collection contains problems from models of real-life applications as well as ones constructed specifically to have particular properties. A classification is given of polynomial eigenvalue problems according to their structural properties. Identifiers...

Scaling is a commonly used technique for standard eigenvalue problems to improve the sensitivity of the eigenvalues. In this paper we investigate scaling for generalized and polynomial eigenvalue problems (PEPs) of arbitrary degree. It is shown that an optimal diagonal scaling of a PEP with respect to an eigenvalue can be described by the ratio of...

A powerful method for solving planar eigenvalue problems is the Method of Particular Solutions (MPS), which is also well known under the name ``point matching method''. The implementation of this method usually depends on the solution of one of three types of linear algebra problems: singular value decomposition, generalized eigenvalue decompositio...

We report the first large-scale statistical study of very high-lying eigenmodes (quantum states) of the mushroom billiard proposed by L. A. Bunimovich [Chaos 11, 802 (2001)]. The phase space of this mixed system is unusual in that it has a single regular region and a single chaotic region, and no KAM hierarchy. We verify Percival's conjecture to hi...

The method of fundamental solutions (MFS) is a popular tool to solve Laplace and Helmholtz boundary value problems. Its main drawback is that it often leads to ill-conditioned systems of equations. In this paper, we investigate for the interior Helmholtz problem on analytic domains how the singularities (charge points) of the MFS basis functions ha...

In this article, we present a modification of the domain decomposition method of Descloux and Tolley for planar eigenvalue problems. Instead of formulating a generalized eigenvalue problem, our method is based on the generalized singular value decomposition. This approach is robust and at the same time highly accurate. Furthermore, we give an impro...

Devises a modification to the method of particular solutions based on angles betwen subspaces, thus avoiding the problem of instability inherent in the earlier method. The new method has links to the generalized singular value decomposition, and can be extended to a domain decomposition method. Supervisor : Prof Nick Trefethen. Thesis (D.Phil.)--Un...

Fox, Henrici, and Moler made famous a "method of particular solutions" for computing eigenvalues and eigenmodes of the Laplacian in planar regions such as polygons. We explain why their formulation of this method breaks down when applied to regions that are insufficiently simple and propose a modification that avoids these difficulties. The crucial...

Recently developed numerical methods make possible the high-accuracy computation of eigenmodes of the Laplacian for a variety of "drums" in two dimensions. A number of computed examples are presented together with a discussion of their implications concerning bound and continuum states, isospectrality, symmetry and degeneracy, eigenvalue avoidance,...

The phenomenon of eigenvalue avoidance is of growing interest in applications ranging from quantum mechanics to the theory of the Riemann zeta function. Until now the computation of eigenvalues of the Laplace operator in planar domains has been a difficult problem, making it hard to compute eigenvalue avoidance. Based on a new method this paper pre...

This paper discusses a projection method for nonlinear eigenvalue problems. The subspace of approximants is constructed by a Jacobi–Davidson-type approach, and the arising eigenproblems of small dimension are solved by safeguarded iteration. The method is applied to a rational eigenvalue problem governing the vibrations of tube bundle immersed in a...

During the last years nonlinear eigenvalue problems of the type T (#)x = 0 became more and more important in many applications with the rapid development of computing performance. In parallel the minmax theory for symmetric nonlinear eigenvalue problems was developed which reveals a strong connection to corresponding linear problems. We want to rev...

MPSpack is a fully object-oriented MATLAB toolbox for solving Laplace, Helmholtz, wave scattering, and related PDE boundary-value problems on piecewise-homogeneous 2D domains, including those with corners. The philosophy is to use basis functions which are particular solutions to the PDE in some region; solving is thus reduced to match-ing on the b...

This tutorial shows how a variety of two-dimensional Laplace and Helmholtz boundary-value and eigenvalue problems may be numeri-cally solved simply and accurately with the MPSpack toolbox for MAT-LAB. We assume basic familiarity with MATLAB and with linear par-tial differential equations.

This is the Users' Guide for NLEVP: a collection of nonlinear eigenvalue problems provided in the form of a MATLAB toolbox. A separate paper describes the collection and its organization.