Spectral element method for three dimensional elliptic problems with smooth interfaces

In this paper we propose a least-squares spectral element method for three dimensional elliptic interface problems. The differentiability estimates and the main stability theorem, using non-conforming spectral element functions, are proven. The proposed method is free from any kind of first order reformulation. A suitable preconditioner is constructed with help of the regularity estimate and proposed stability estimates which is used to control the condition number. We show that these preconditioners are spectrally equivalent to the quadratic forms by which we approximate them. We obtain the error estimates which show the exponential accuracy of the method. Numerical results are obtained for both straight and curved interfaces to show the efficiency of the proposed method. •A fully non-conforming LSSEM is studied for 3D elliptic interface problems.•Differentiability estimates and the main stability theorem are proven.•Efficient diagonal preconditioner is discussed for 3D elliptic interface problems.•Exponential convergence rate is shown through error estimate and numerical examples.•Numerical results are obtained for both straight and curved interfaces.