Fast, Adaptive, High-Order Accurate Discretization of the Lippmann--Schwinger Equation in Two Dimensions

We present a fast direct solver for two-dimensional scattering problems, where an incident wave impinges on a penetrable medium with compact support. We represent the scattered field using a volume potential whose kernel is the outgoing Green's function for the exterior domain. Inserting this representation into the governing partial differential equation, we obtain an integral equation of Lippmann--Schwinger type. The principal contribution here is the development of an automatically adaptive, high-order accurate discretization based on a quad-tree data structure which provides rapid access to arbitrary elements of the discretized system matrix. This permits the straightforward application of state-of-the-art algorithms for constructing compressed versions of the solution operator. These solvers typically require O(N3/2) work, where N denotes the number of degrees of freedom. We demonstrate the performance of the method for a variety of problems in both low and high frequency regimes.