Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

A Schrödinger eigenvalue problem is solved for the 2D quantum simple harmonic oscillator using a finite element discretization of real space within which elements are adaptively spatially refined. We compare two competing methods of adaptively discretizing the real-space grid on which computations are performed without modifying the standard polynomial basis-set traditionally used in finite element interpolations; namely, (i) an application of the Kelly error estimator, and (ii) a refinement based on the local potential level. When the performance of these methods are compared to standard uniform global refinement, we find that they significantly improve the total time spent in the eigensolver.

adaptive finite element analysis, Harmonic oscillator problems, Schrödinger equation