Symbol-Based Analysis of Finite Element and Isogeometric B-Spline Discretizations of Eigenvalue Problems: Exposition and Review

We present an example-based exposition and review of recent advances in symbol-based spectral analysis. We consider constant- and variable-coefficient, second-order eigenvalue problems discretized through the (isogeometric) Galerkin method based on B-splines of degree p and smoothness C k , 0 ≤ k≤ p- 1. For each discretized problem, we compute the so-called symbol, which is a function describing the asymptotic singular value and eigenvalue distribution of the associated discretization matrices. Using the symbol, we are able to formulate analytical predictions for the eigenvalue errors occurring when the exact eigenvalues are approximated by the numerical eigenvalues. In this way, we recover and extend previous analytical spectral results. We are also able to predict the existence of p- k spectral branches, one “acoustical” and p- k- 1 “optical”, when discretizing the one-dimensional Laplacian eigenvalue problem. We provide explicit and implicit analytical expressions for these branches, and we quantify the divergence to infinity with respect to p of the largest optical branch in the case of C smoothness (the case of classical finite element analysis).