Numerical approximation of biharmonic wave maps into spheres (Q6974675)

In this paper, a structure preserving nonconforming finite element approximation of the biharmonic wave maps into spheres equations is constructed. The authors employ an \(H^1\)-conforming finite element spatial discretization, involving (fourth order) biharmonic operators which requires at least \(C^1\) regularity of the employed polynomial approximation spaces. In order to show convergence of the numerical approximation, the authors require strong convergence of the gradient of the numerical approximation by driving new discrete compactness result for the nonconforming setting. The convergence towards a weak solution for spatial dimension \(d = 1\) is shown, whereas in higher spatial dimensions, the stabilized variant of the numerical scheme is convergent. Furthermore, a variant of the numerical scheme is presented which preserves the discrete energy. Numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed numerical approximation