Sound propagation in air is accurately described by a small perturbation of the ambient pressure away from a quiescent state. This is the realm of linear acoustics, where the propagation of a time-harmonic wave can be modeled using the Helmholtz equation. When the wavelength is small relative to the size of a scattering obstacle, techniques from geometric optics are applicable. Geometric methods such as raytracing are often used for computational room acoustics simulations in situations where the geometry of the built environment is sufficiently complicated. At the same time, the high-frequency approximation of the Helmholtz equation is described by two partial differential equations: the eikonal equation, whose solution gives the first arrival time of a geometric acoustics/optics wavefront as a field; and a transport equation, the solution of which describes the amplitude of that wavefield. Phenomena related to high-frequency acoustic diffraction are frequently omitted from these models because of their complexity. These phenomena can be modeled using a high-frequency diffraction theory, such as the uniform theory of diffraction. Despite their shortcomings, geometric methods for room acoustics provide a useful trade-off between realism and computational efficiency.

Motivated by the limitations of geometric methods, we approach the problem of geometric acoustics using numerical methods for solving partial differential equations. Our focus is offline sound propagation in a high-frequency regime where directly solving the wave or Helmholtz equations is infeasible. To this end, we conduct a broad-based survey of semi-Lagrangian solvers for the eikonal equation, which make the local ray information of the solution explicit. We develop efficient, first-order solvers for the eikonal equation in 3D, called ordered line integral methods (OLIMs). The OLIMs provide intuition about how to design work-efficient semi-Lagrangian eikonal solvers, but their first order accuracy is not sufficient to compute the amplitude consistently. Motivated by the requirements of sound propagation simulations, we develop higher-order semi-Lagrangian eikonal solvers which we term jet marching methods (JMMs). JMMs augment the efficiency of OLIMs by additionally transporting higher-order derivative information of the eikonal in a causal fashion, which allows for high-order solution of the eikonal equation using compact stencils. We use the information made available locally by our JMMs to use paraxial raytracing to simultaneously solve the transport equation yielding the amplitude. We initially develop a JMM which handles a smoothly varying speed of sound on a regular grid in 2D. Motivated by the requirements of room acoustics applications, we develop a second-order JMM for solving the eikonal equation on a tetrahedron mesh for a constant speed of sound as a special case. As before, we use paraxial raytracing to compute the amplitude. Additionally, we compute multiple arrivals by reinitializing the eikonal equation on reflecting walls and diffracting edges. To compute these scattered fields, we devise algorithms which allow us to apply reflection and diffraction boundary conditions for the eikonal and amplitude. For the amplitude, we construct algorithms that allow us to apply the uniform theory of diffraction in a semi-Lagrangian setting efficiently.