A finite element/operator-splitting method for the numerical solution of the two dimensional elliptic Monge-Ampère equation (Q2000024)

The paper introduces a novel method for the numerical solution of the two-dimensional elliptic Monge-Ampère equation. The methodology relies on the combination of a time discretization by operator-splitting with a mixed finite element based space approximation where one employs the same finite-dimensional spaces to approximate the unknown function and its three second-order derivatives. A key ingredient of this approach is the reformulation of the Monge-Ampère equation as a nonlinear elliptic equation in divergence form, involving the cofactor matrix of the Hessian of the unknown function. With the above elliptic equation, an initial value problem is associated and discretized by operator-splitting. A whole range of numerical experiments demonstrates that the resulting methodology is robust and it can handle a large variety of triangulations ranging from uniform on rectangles to unstructured on domains with curved boundaries. For those cases where the solution is smooth and isotropic enough, the authors suggest a two-stage method to improve the computational efficiency, the second stage being reminiscent of a Newton-like method. The methodology discussed in this article is able to handle domains with curved boundaries and unstructured meshes, using piecewise affine continuous approximations, while preserving optimal, or nearly optimal, convergence orders for the approximation error.