A Galerkin finite element method for a class of time-space fractional differential equation with nonsmooth data (Q514461)

The authors study a Galerkin finite element approximation for a class of time-space fractional differential equations. They construct a finite element scheme based on the Crank-Nicolson method and the product trapezoidal technique and then present a convergence analysis of the scheme. This analysis does not rely on the particular form of the fractional differential operator, requiring only that it satisfies properties of continuity and coercivity. The properties of the fractional Ritz projection and the fractional Ritz-Volterra projection [\textit{J. R. Cannon} and \textit{Y. Lin}, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 27, No. 3, 595--607 (1990; Zbl 0709.65122)] projection are employed to separately derive the convergence analysis of the semi-discrete scheme and the fully-discrete scheme. Some numerical examples are also given to verify the efficiency of the approach presented.