Quadratic spline wavelets with short support for fourth-order problems (Q2258467)

A well-conditioned construction of quadratic spline wavelets on the interval with Dirichlet boundary conditions is proposed. The wavelets have the shortest possible support for a given number of vanishing moments. A tensor product then yields a construction for the unit square and the functions form a Riesz basis of the Sobolev space \(H^2_0(0,1)^2\). The basis functions are quadratic \(B\)-splines given in closed form and the inner wavelets have one vanishing moment. Applications deal with a fourth-order elliptic equation, the biharmonic equation on the unit square using a wavelet Galerkin discretization. The stiffness matrix is shown to have a uniformly bounded condition number, illustrated by a numerical example.