Numerical verifications of solutions for nonlinear parabolic equations in one-space dimensional case (Q1362914)

The authors investigate a numerical method for verifying solutions with guaranteed error bounds of the parabolic problem \[ u_t- u_{xx}= -f(x,t,u) \] together with boundary and initial conditions, where \(f(\cdot,u)\in L^2( (0,R)\times (0,T))\) for some \(R,T>0\). The problem is posed in weak form, and investigated in the context of time-dependent Sobolev spaces with a weighted norm. Under suitable assumptions on \(f\), this problem can be shown, using fixed point methods, to have a solution. The authors next investigate an a posteriori estimate of the solution \(u\) in terms of an approximate solution \(u_h\). This is achieved by making use of certain norm relations, which in turn lead to the existence of \(u\) satisfying \[ |u- u_h|\leq\alpha \] in a weighted \(L^p\) norm, for given \(\alpha\), where \(\alpha\) represents the radius of a ball in \(L^p\). Much of the paper is taken up with the calculation of a key constant which appears in the norm relations. A Newton method for computation of \(u_h\) is presented, with finite elements in space and finite differences in time being used. The article concludes with a numerical example.