  We present a fast direct solver for two dimensional scattering problems,
where an incident wave impinges on a penetrable medium with compact support. We
represent the scattered field using a volume potential whose kernel is the
outgoing Green's function for the exterior domain. Inserting this
representation into the governing partial differential equation, we obtain an
integral equation of the Lippmann-Schwinger type. The principal contribution
here is the development of an automatically adaptive, high-order accurate
discretization based on a quad tree data structure which provides rapid access
to arbitrary elements of the discretized system matrix. This permits the
straightforward application of state-of-the-art algorithms for constructing
compressed versions of the solution operator. These solvers typically require
$O(N^{3/2})$ work, where $N$ denotes the number of degrees of freedom. We
demonstrate the performance of the method for a variety of problems in both the
low and high frequency regimes.
