Preconditioning for Mixed Finite Element Formulations of Elliptic Problems

In this paper, we discuss a preconditioning technique for mixed finite element discretizations of elliptic equations. The technique is based on a block-diagonal approximation of the mass matrix which maintains the sparsity and positive definiteness of the corresponding Schur complement. This preconditioner arises from the multipoint flux mixed finite element method and is robust with respect to mesh size and is better conditioned for full permeability tensors than a preconditioner based on a diagonal approximation of the mass matrix.