The time-fractional diffusion inverse problem subject to an extra measurement by a local discontinuous Galerkin method (Q1731611)

The paper is concerned with the analysis and the numerical solution of the time-fractional diffusion inverse problem. The studied equation is of the form \[ _0^R D_t^{\alpha} u \left( x, t \right) - \frac{\partial^2}{\partial x^2} u \left( x, t \right) -q \left( x \right) u \left( x, t \right) = f \left( x, t\right), \quad \left(x, t \right) \in \Omega \times \left( 0, T \right), \] and is equipped with initial and boundary conditions \[ u \left( x, 0 \right) = u_0 \left(x \right) \text{ for } x \in \Omega, \quad u \left( x, t \right) = 0 \text{ for } \left(x, t \right) \in \partial \Omega \times \left( 0, T \right). \] The fractional derivative $_0^R D_t^{\alpha} u$ is defined in the Riemann-Liouville sense. The inverse problem is to find the function $q$ under the assumption that $u \left( x, T\right) = \phi \left(x \right)$ for $x \in \Omega$ and that the functions $f$, $u_0$ and $\phi$ are given. The authors prove the existence and uniqueness of the solution of this problem. Then, they propose a fully discrete scheme using the local discontinuous Galerkin method for spatial discretization and the generalized compound quadrature formula proposed by \textit{K. Diethelm} [ETNA, Electron. Trans. Numer. Anal. 5, 1--6 (1997; Zbl 0890.65071)] for the discretization of the time fractional derivative. They derive error estimates for the scheme. Two numerical examples are presented to confirm the theoretical results and to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.