A stable, convergent, conservative and linear finite difference scheme for the Cahn-Hilliard equation (Q1394568)

A new linear finite difference scheme is designed for the Cahn-Hilliard equation based on a combination of the discrete variational derivative technique and the linearization technique. The proposed linear scheme is stable and \(L_2 \)-convergent, and inherits the conservation of mass and the decrease of the total energy from the Cahn-Hilliard equation. From the mass conservation and the energy decrease properties, it is shown that the scheme is stable in the sense that the numerical solution is bounded with respect to max-norm. It is proven that the proposed scheme has a unique solution under a certain mild condition for \(\Delta t\). It is also proven that the numerical solution by the proposed scheme converges to the true solution of the Cahn-Hilliard equation with the convergence rate of \(O\left( {\left( {\Delta x} \right)^2 + \left( {\Delta t} \right)^2 } \right)\) if \(u\left( {x, \cdot } \right) \in C^3 \left[ {0,T} \right]\) for any fixed \(x\) and \(u\left( { \cdot ,t} \right) \in C^6 \left[ {0,L} \right]\) for any fixed \(x\), where \(u\left( {x,t} \right)\) is the true solution. Finally some numerical examples are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed difference scheme.