Numerical Analysis of First and Second Order Unconditional Energy Stable Schemes for Nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard and Allen-Cahn Equations

This PhD dissertation concentrates on the numerical analysis of a family of fully discrete, energy stable schemes for nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard and Allen-Cahn type equations, which are integro-partial differential equations (IPDEs). These two IPDEs -- along with the evolution equation from dynamical density functional theory (DDFT), which is a generalization of the nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation -- are used to model a variety of physical and biological processes such as crystallization, phase transformations, and tumor growth. This dissertation advances the computational state-of-the-art related to this field in the following main contributions: (I) We propose and analyze a family of two-dimensional unconditionally energy stable schemes for these IPDEs. Specifically, we prove that the schemes are (a) uniquely solvable, independent of time and space step sizes; (b) energy stable, independent of time and space step sizes; and (c) convergent, provided the time step sizes are sufficiently small. (II) We develop a highly efficient solver for schemes we propose. These schemes are semi-implicit and contain nonlinear implicit terms, which makes numerical solutions challenging. To overcome this difficulty, a nearly-optimally efficient nonlinear multigrid method is employed. (III) Via our numerical methods, we are able to simulate crystal nucleation and growth phenomena, with arbitrary crystalline anisotropy, with properly chosen parameters for nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation, in a very efficient and straightforward way. To our knowledge these contributions do not exist in any form in any of the previous works in the literature

Positivity-preserving, energy stable numerical schemes for the Cahn-Hilliard equation with logarithmic potential

We present and analyze finite difference numerical schemes for the Allen Cahn/Cahn-Hilliard equation with a logarithmic Flory Huggins energy potential. Both the first order and second order accurate temporal algorithms are considered. In the first order scheme, we treat the nonlinear logarithmic terms and the surface diffusion term implicitly, and update the linear expansive term and the mobility explicitly. We provide a theoretical justification that, this numerical algorithm has a unique solution such that the positivity is always preserved for the logarithmic arguments. In particular, our analysis reveals a subtle fact: the singular nature of the logarithmic term around the values of $-1$ and 1 prevents the numerical solution reaching these singular values, so that the numerical scheme is always well-defined as long as the numerical solution stays similarly bounded at the previous time step. Furthermore, an unconditional energy stability of the numerical scheme is derived, without any restriction for the time step size. The unique solvability and the positivity-preserving property for the second order scheme are proved using similar ideas, in which the singular nature of the logarithmic term plays an essential role. For both the first and second order accurate schemes, we are able to derive an optimal rate convergence analysis, which gives the full order error estimate. The case with a non-constant mobility is analyzed as well. We also describe a practical and efficient multigrid solver for the proposed numerical schemes, and present some numerical results, which demonstrate the robustness of the numerical schemes

On the rate of convergence of Yosida approximation for rhe nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation

It is well-known that one can construct solutions to the nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation with singular potentials via Yosida approximation with parameter $\lambda \to 0$. The usual method is based on compactness arguments and does not provide any rate of convergence. Here, we fill the gap and we obtain an explicit convergence rate $\sqrt{\lambda}$. The proof is based on the theory of maximal monotone operators and an observation that the nonlocal operator is of Hilbert-Schmidt type. Our estimate can provide convergence result for the Galerkin methods where the parameter $\lambda$ could be linked to the discretization parameters, yielding appropriate error estimates