  This paper introduces the hierarchical interpolative factorization for
integral equations (HIF-IE) associated with elliptic problems in two and three
dimensions. This factorization takes the form of an approximate generalized LU
decomposition that permits the efficient application of the discretized
operator and its inverse. HIF-IE is based on the recursive skeletonization
algorithm but incorporates a novel combination of two key features: (1) a
matrix factorization framework for sparsifying structured dense matrices and
(2) a recursive dimensional reduction strategy to decrease the cost. Thus,
higher-dimensional problems are effectively mapped to one dimension, and we
conjecture that constructing, applying, and inverting the factorization all
have linear or quasilinear complexity. Numerical experiments support this claim
and further demonstrate the performance of our algorithm as a generalized fast
multipole method, direct solver, and preconditioner. HIF-IE is compatible with
geometric adaptivity and can handle both boundary and volume problems. MATLAB
codes are freely available.
