A virtual element generalization on polygonal meshes of the Scott-Vogelius finite element method for the 2-D Stokes problem (Q2136225)

The authors introduce a virtual element method for the numerical approximation of the Stokes problem. The virtual element spaces for the discretization of the velocity field and of the pressure are a generalization of the Scott-Vogelius finite element. Obviously, in the lowest order case this method could be unstable, as on triangular meshes it coincides with the Scott-Vogelius element \(\mathbb{P}_1\)-\(\mathbb{P}_0\), which is known to be unstable. A-priori error estimates in the energy norm for the error in the approximation of the velocity and the pressure are proved and a wide set of numerical examples confirm the theoretical results.