A PPPM fast summation method for fluids and beyond

Solving the N-body problem, i.e. the Poisson problem with point sources, is a common task in graphics and simulation. The naive direct summation of the kernel function over all particles scales quadratically, rendering it too slow for large problems, while the optimal Fast Multipole Method has drastic implementation complexity and can sometimes carry too high an overhead to be practical. We present a new Particle-Particle Particle-Mesh (PPPM) algorithm which is fast, accurate, and easy to implement even in parallel on a GPU. We capture long-range interactions with a fast multigrid solver on a background grid with a novel boundary condition, while short-range interactions are calculated directly with a new error compensation to avoid error from the background grid. We demonstrate the power of PPPM with a new vortex particle smoke solver, which features a vortex segment-approach to the stretching term, potential flow to enforce no-stick solid boundaries on arbitrary moving solid boundaries, and a new mechanism for vortex shedding from boundary layers. Comparison against a simpler Vortex-in-Cell approach shows PPPM can produce significantly more detailed results with less computation. In addition, we use our PPPM solver for a Poisson surface reconstruction problem to show its potential as a general-purpose Poisson solver.