Fast preconditioned iterative methods for finite volume discretization of steady-state space-fractional diffusion equations

We consider the preconditioned Krylov subspace method for linear systems arising from the finite volume discretization method of steady-state variable-coefficient conservative space-fractional diffusion equations. We propose to use a scaled-circulant preconditioner to deal with such Toeplitz-like discretization matrices. We show that the difference between the scaled-circulant preconditioner and the coefficient matrix is equal to the sum of a small-norm matrix and a low-rank matrix. Numerical tests are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed method for one- and two-dimensional steady-state space-fractional diffusion equations and demonstrate that the preconditioned Krylov subspace method converges very quickly.