Harmonic Caching for Walk on Spheres

We present a variance reduction technique for Walk on Spheres (WoS) that solves elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) by combining overlapping harmonic expansions of the solution, each estimated using unbiased Monte Carlo random walks. Our method supports Laplace and screened Poisson equations with Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin boundary conditions in both 2D and 3D. By adaptively covering the domain with local expansion regions and reconstructing the solution inside each region using an infinite Fourier series of the harmonic function, our method achieves over an order of magnitude lower error than traditional pointwise WoS in equal time. While low-order truncations of the series typically introduce limited bias, we also introduce a stochastic truncation scheme that eliminates this bias in the reconstructed solution. Compared to recently developed caching algorithms for WoS, such as Boundary and Mean Value Caching, our approach yields solutions with lower error and fewer correlation artifacts.

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Publication Details

Journal
ACM Transactions on Graphics
Published
2025-12-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3763322
Primary Topic
Mathematical Approximation and Integration
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Harmonic Caching for Walk on Spheres

Wojciech Jarosz, Eugene d’Eon, Zihong Zhou, Rohan Sawhney
ACM Transactions on Graphics
Mathematical Approximation and Integration
article

Harmonic Caching for Walk on Spheres

Wojciech Jarosz, Eugene d’Eon, Zihong Zhou, Rohan Sawhney
article en

Abstract

We present a variance reduction technique for Walk on Spheres (WoS) that solves elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) by combining overlapping harmonic expansions of the solution, each estimated using unbiased Monte Carlo random walks. Our method supports Laplace and screened Poisson equations with Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin boundary conditions in both 2D and 3D. By adaptively covering the domain with local expansion regions and reconstructing the solution inside each region using an infinite Fourier series of the harmonic function, our method achieves over an order of magnitude lower error than traditional pointwise WoS in equal time. While low-order truncations of the series typically introduce limited bias, we also introduce a stochastic truncation scheme that eliminates this bias in the reconstructed solution. Compared to recently developed caching algorithms for WoS, such as Boundary and Mean Value Caching, our approach yields solutions with lower error and fewer correlation artifacts.

ACM Transactions on GraphicsVol. 44(6)
Dartmouth College (US), Statistics New Zealand (NZ), Nvidia (United Kingdom) (GB), Nvidia (United States) (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 48%
Mathematical Approximation and Integration
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