Scalable parallel computation of the translation operator in three dimensions

We propose a novel algorithm for the parallel, distributed-memory computation of the translation operator in the three-dimensional multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA). Sequential algorithms can compute the translation operator with L multipoles and O(L
²
) sampling points in O(L
²
) time. State-of-the-art hierarchical parallelization schemes of the MLFMA rely on the distribution of radiation patterns and associated translation operators among P = O(L
²
) parallel processes, necessitating the development of distributed-memory algorithms for the computation of the translation operator. Whereas a baseline parallel algorithm computes this translation operator in O(L) time, we propose an algorithm that achieves this in only O(log L) time. For large translation operators and a high number of parallel processes, our algorithm proves to be roughly ten times faster than the baseline algorithm.