The Efficient Computation of Sparse Jacobian Matrices Using Automatic Differentiation

This paper is concerned with the efficient computation of sparse Jacobian matrices of nonlinear vector maps using automatic differentiation (AD). Specifically, we propose the use of a graph coloring technique, bicoloring, to exploit the sparsity of the Jacobian matrix J and thereby allow for the efficient determination of J using AD software. We analyze both a direct scheme and a substitution process. We discuss the results of numerical experiments indicating significant practical potential of this approach.