Parabolic boundary integral operators symbolic representation and basic properties (Q5943216)

The authors consider problems arising in the analysis of some boundary element methods for the heat equation. In order to provide a complete treatment of the pseudodifferential operators arising from the boundary reduction of parabolic operators a theory of parabolic pseudodifferential operators in anisotropic spaces is developed. A symbolic calculus for a class of symbols defined on \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\times\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) is constructed. A periodisation procedure for the class of symbols on the cylinder \(T^n\times \mathbb{R}\) is then developed. Precise estimates for the essential norm in anisotropic Sobolev spaces are obtained and Gårding's inequality is shown to hold for suitable operators. New mapping properties related to localisation are obtained. These are important when discussing the analysis of numerical methods for the solution of boundary integral equations.