Fourier pseudospectral methods for the spatial variable-order fractional wave equations

In this paper, we propose Fourier pseudospectral methods to solve the variable-order space fractional wave equation and develop an accelerated matrix-free approach for its effective implementation. In constant-order cases, our methods can be efficiently implemented via the (inverse) fast Fourier transforms, and the computational cost at each time step is 𝒪(Nlog N) with N the total number of spatial points. However, this fast algorithm fails in the variable-order cases due to the spatial dependence of the Fourier multiplier. On the other hand, the direct matrix-vector multiplication approach becomes impractical due to excessive memory requirements. To address this challenge, we proposed an accelerated matrix-free approach for the efficient computation of variable-order cases. The computational cost is 𝒪(MNlog N) and storage cost 𝒪(MN), where M ≪ N. Moreover, our method can be easily parallelized to further enhance its efficiency. Numerical studies show that our methods are effective in solving the variable-order space fractional wave equations, especially in high-dimensional cases. Wave propagation in heterogeneous media is studied in comparison to homogeneous counterparts. We find that wave dynamics in fractional cases become more intricate due to nonlocal interactions. Specifically, dynamics in heterogeneous media are more complex than those in homogeneous media.