A Contour Method for Multiparameter Eigenvalue Problems

Abstract

Multiparameter eigenvalue problems arise in boundary value problems, stability analysis, and delay-differential equations. Despite their importance, existing methods either require solving extremely large global problems or rely on local iterative techniques that only recover a few eigenvalues at a time. In this work we develop the first contour method for analytic multiparameter eigenvalue problems. The key theoretical ingredient is a new residue formula for multivariate matrix-valued analytic functions, extending Beyn's Keldysh-based residue theorem for meromorphic operator functions to several complex variables. Using this, we derive a multidimensional analogue of Beyn's contour method that computes all the eigenvalues of a multiparameter eigenvalue problem contained in a prescribed region of $\mathbb{C}^d$. The resulting algorithm targets eigenvalues in a region without constructing preposterously large matrices and is embarrassingly parallelizable. Numerical experiments demonstrate that we can now successfully solve large multiparameter problems arising in applications where existing approaches struggle.