Gradient Flows and Nonlinear Power Methods for the Computation of Nonlinear Eigenfunctions

Abstract: This chapter describes how gradient flows and nonlinear power methods in Banach spaces can be used to solve nonlinear eigenvector-dependent eigenvalue problems, and how convergence of (discretized) approximations can be verified. We review several flows from literature, which were proposed to compute nonlinear eigenfunctions, and show that they all relate to normalized gradient flows. Furthermore, we show that the implicit Euler discretization of gradient flows gives rise to a nonlinear power method of the proximal operator and prove their convergence to nonlinear eigenfunctions. Finally, we prove that $\Gamma$-convergence of functionals implies convergence of their ground states, which is important for discrete approximations.