On the consistency of the combinatorial codifferential

DOI10.1090/S0002-9947-2014-06134-5MaRDI QIDQ3190807zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Douglas N. Arnold, Richard S. Falk, Johnny Guzmán, Gantumur Tsogtgerel

Publication date 19 September 2014

Published in Transactions of the American Mathematical Society (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.4472

zbMATH Keywords

combinatorial codifferentialconsistencyfinite elementWhitney form

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Discrete version of topics in analysis (39A12) Approximations in PL-topology (57Q55) Differential forms in global analysis (58A10) Hodge theory in global analysis (58A14) Finite element, Rayleigh-Ritz and Galerkin methods for boundary value problems involving PDEs (65N30)

Abstract: In 1976, Dodziuk and Patodi employed Whitney forms to define a combinatorial codifferential operator on cochains, and they raised the question whether it is consistent in the sense that for a smooth enough differential form the combinatorial codifferential of the associated cochain converges to the exterior codifferential of the form as the triangulation is refined. In 1991, Smits proved this to be the case for the combinatorial codifferential applied to 1-forms in two dimensions under the additional assumption that the initial triangulation is refined in a completely regular fashion, by dividing each triangle into four similar triangles. In this paper we extend Smits's result to arbitrary dimensions, showing that the combinatorial codifferential on 1-forms is consistent if the triangulations are uniform or piecewise uniform in a certain precise sense. We also show that this restriction on the triangulations is needed, giving a counterexample in which a different regular refinement procedure, namely Whitney's standard subdivision, is used. Further, we show by numerical example that for 2-forms in three dimensions, the combinatorial codifferential is not consistent even for the most regular subdivision process.

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Cites work

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Cited in

(5)

• Combinatorial approximation to the divergence of one-forms on surfaces
• Convergence analysis of triangular MAC schemes for two dimensional Stokes equations
• On the relation between continuous and combinatorial
• Several remarks on the combinatorial Hodge star
• Unified form language: a domain-specific language for weak formulations of partial differential equations

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• FEniCS

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