A hierarchical preconditioner for the mortar finite element method

Mortar elements form a family of nonconforming finite element methods that are more flexible than conforming finite elements and are known to be as accurate as their conforming counterparts. A fast iterative method is developed for linear, second order elliptic equations in the plane. Our algorithm is modeled on a hierarchical basis preconditioner previously analyzed and tested, for the conforming case, by Barry Smith and the second author. A complete analysis and results of numerical experiments are given for lower order mortar elements and geometrically conforming decompositions of the region into subregions.