Adaptive numerical treatment of elliptic systems on manifolds (Q5959275)

Adaptive multilevel finite element methods are developed and analyzed for nonlinear elliptic systems of tensor equations on manifolds, arising in geometric analysis and general relativity. The author derives a posteriori error indicators which are based on local residuals and on global linearized dual problems. The error indicators are used within a software package for highly accurate numerical solution of nonlinear elliptic systems on 2D- and 3D-manifolds, which is described in detail. The author discusses a parallel algorithm based on a new partition of unity and obtains global \(L^2\) and \(H^1\) error estimates. Finally an example from general relativity is considered, where quasi-optimal error estimates are obtained and some of the capabilities of the software package are demonstrated.