Adaptive methods for semi-linear elliptic equations with critical exponents and interior singularities (Q1379035)

The authors consider the effectiveness of adaptive finite element methods for finding the solutions of the parametrised semi-linear elliptic equation \(\Delta u+\lambda u +u^5 =0\) with zero Dirichlet boundary condition. The linear operator \(L\) defined by \(L\varphi= \Delta\varphi +\lambda \varphi+ 5u^4 \varphi\) has a singular inverse as \(\lambda\) tends to a critical value. It is shown that conventional adaptive methods (using both static and dynamic regridding) based on usual error estimates fail to give accurate solutions. This is directly due to the lack of invertibility of the operator \(L\). In contrast it is shown that error estimates which take this into account can give answers to any prescribed tolerance.