Efficient boundary elements for the Smoluchowski diffusion equation

The Smoluchowski diffusion equation describes diffusion in the presence of external forces. Studying the mechanical response of soft materials to linear forces, such as shear, results in a boundary value problem involving an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operator in an exterior domain with non-constant, unbounded coefficients. In this article, we present efficient and highly accurate boundary element methods in the frequency domain, motivated by applications in soft matter physics. Our key contributions concern the accurate assembly of the Galerkin matrix, combining the approximation of the fundamental solution as a Fourier integral with the resolution of near-field singularities. Numerical experiments demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methods and show their relevance for the computation of rheological quantities.