A New Triangular Spectral Element Method I: Implementation and Analysis on a Triangle

This paper serves as our first effort to develop a new triangular spectral element method (TSEM) on unstructured meshes, using the rectangle-triangle mapping proposed in the conference note [21]. Here, we provide some new insights into the originality and distinctive features of the mapping, and show that this transform only induces a logarithmic singularity, which allows us to devise a fast, stable and accurate numerical algorithm for its removal. Consequently, any triangular element can be treated as efficiently as a quadrilateral element, which affords a great flexibility in handling complex computational domains. Benefited from the fact that the image of the mapping includes the polynomial space as a subset, we are able to obtain optimal $L^2$- and $H^1$-estimates of approximation by the proposed basis functions on triangle. The implementation details and some numerical examples are provided to validate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method. All these will pave the way for developing an unstructured TSEM based on, e.g., the hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin formulation

On the optimal rates of convergence of Gegenbauer projections

In this paper we present a comprehensive convergence rate analysis of Gegenbauer projections. We show that, for analytic functions, the convergence rate of the Gegenbauer projection of degree $n$ is the same as that of the best approximation of the same degree when $\lambda\leq0$ and the former is slower than the latter by a factor of $n^{\lambda}$ when $\lambda>0$, where $\lambda$ is the parameter in Gegenbauer polynomials. For piecewise analytic functions, we demonstrate that the convergence rate of the Gegenbauer projection of degree $n$ is the same as that of the best approximation of the same degree when $\lambda\leq1$ and the former is slower than the latter by a factor of $n^{\lambda-1}$ when $\lambda>1$. The extension to functions of fractional smoothness is also discussed. Our theoretical findings are illustrated by numerical experiments.Comment: 30 pages; 8 figure

Regularity theory and high order numerical methods for the (1D)-fractional Laplacian

This paper presents regularity results and associated high order numerical methods for one-dimensional fractional-Laplacian boundary-value problems. On the basis of a factorization of solutions as a product of a certain edge-singular weight ω times a "regular" unknown, a characterization of the regularity of solutions is obtained in terms of the smoothness of the corresponding right-hand sides. In particular, for right-hand sides which are analytic in a Bernstein ellipse, analyticity in the same Bernstein ellipse is obtained for the ``regular'' unknown. Moreover, a sharp Sobolev regularity result is presented which completely characterizes the co-domain of the fractional-Laplacian operator in terms of certain weighted Sobolev spaces introduced in (Babuška and Guo, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 2002). The present theoretical treatment relies on a full eigendecomposition for a certain weighted integral operator in terms of the Gegenbauer polynomial basis. The proposed Gegenbauer-based Nyström numerical method for the fractional-Laplacian Dirichlet problem, further, is significantly more accurate and efficient than other algorithms considered previously. The sharp error estimates presented in this paper indicate that the proposed algorithm is spectrally accurate, with convergence rates that only depend on the smoothness of the right-hand side. In particular, convergence is exponentially fast (resp. faster than any power of the mesh-size) for analytic (resp. infinitely smooth) right-hand sides. The properties of the algorithm are illustrated with a variety of numerical results

Construction of Modern Robust Nodal Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Methods for the Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations

Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods have a long history in computational physics and engineering to approximate solutions of partial differential equations due to their high-order accuracy and geometric flexibility. However, DG is not perfect and there remain some issues. Concerning robustness, DG has undergone an extensive transformation over the past seven years into its modern form that provides statements on solution boundedness for linear and nonlinear problems. This chapter takes a constructive approach to introduce a modern incarnation of the DG spectral element method for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations in a three-dimensional curvilinear context. The groundwork of the numerical scheme comes from classic principles of spectral methods including polynomial approximations and Gauss-type quadratures. We identify aliasing as one underlying cause of the robustness issues for classical DG spectral methods. Removing said aliasing errors requires a particular differentiation matrix and careful discretization of the advective flux terms in the governing equations.Comment: 85 pages, 2 figures, book chapte