An Efficient Finite Element Method for Multi-dimensional Nonlocal Laplacian on Uniform Grids

Computing the stiffness matrix for the finite element discretization of the nonlocal Laplacian on unstructured meshes is difficult, because the operator is nonlocal and can even be singular. In this paper, we focus on the $C^0$-piecewise linear finite element method (FEM) for the nonlocal Laplacian on uniform grids within a $d$-dimensional rectangular domain. By leveraging the connection between FE bases and B-splines (having attractive convolution properties), we can reduce the involved $2d$-dimensional integrals for the stiffness matrix entries into integrations over $d$-dimensional balls with explicit integrands involving cubic B-splines and the kernel functions, which allows for explicit study of the singularities and accurate evaluations of such integrals in spherical coordinates. We show the nonlocal stiffness matrix has a block-Toeplitz structure, so the matrix-vector multiplication can be implemented using fast Fourier transform (FFT). In addition, when the interaction radius $\delta\to 0^+,$ the nonlocal stiffness matrix automatically reduces to the local one. Although our semi-analytic approach on uniform grids cannot be extended to general domains with unstructured meshes, the resulting solver can seamlessly integrate with the grid-overlay (Go) technique for the nonlocal Laplacian on arbitrary bounded domains.