Geometric discretization of the multidimensional Dirac delta distribution - Application to the Poisson equation with singular source terms

We present a discretization method for the multidimensional Dirac distribution. We show its applicability in the context of integration problems, and for discretizing Dirac-distributed source terms in Poisson equations with constant or variable diffusion coefficients. The discretization is cell-based and can thus be applied in a straightforward fashion to Quadtree/Octree grids. The method produces second-order accurate results for integration. Superlinear convergence is observed when it is used to model Dirac-distributed source terms in Poisson equations: the observed order of convergence is 2 or slightly smaller. The method is consistent with the discretization of Dirac delta distribution for codimension one surfaces presented in [1,2]. We present Quadtree/Octree construction procedures to preserve convergence and present various numerical examples, including multi-scale problems that are intractable with uniform grids.