A discontinuous Galerkin method for time fractional diffusion equations with variable coefficients (Q329324)

The authors consider a piecewise-linear, time-stepping discontinuous Galerkin method to solve a time-fractional diffusion equation with variable coefficients involving a Caputo derivative of order \(\mu \in (0,1)\). A standard Galerkin method of total degree \(\leq 1\) on each spatial mesh elements is considered as a spatial discretization. Well-posedness of the fully discrete scheme and error analysis are proved. An error estimate is proved to be of order \(k^{2-\frac{\mu}{2}}+h^2\) in the \(L^2(L^2)\)-norm. Some numerical examples are presented and it is remarked that the order is \(k^ 2 +h^2 \) in the stronger \(L^\infty (L^2)\)-norm. Variable time steps are used to compensate the singularity of the continuous solution near \(t=0\).