Approximation in FEM, DG and IGA: A Theoretical Comparison

In this paper we compare approximation properties of degree $p$ spline spaces with different numbers of continuous derivatives. We prove that, for a given space dimension, \smooth {p-1} splines provide better a priori error bounds for the approximation of functions in $H^{p+1}(0,1)$. Our result holds for all practically interesting cases when comparing \smooth {p-1} splines with \smooth {-1} (discontinuous) splines. When comparing \smooth {p-1} splines with \smooth 0 splines our proof covers almost all cases for $p\ge 3$, but we can not conclude anything for $p=2$. The results are generalized to the approximation of functions in $H^{q+1}(0,1)$ for $q<p$, to broken Sobolev spaces and to tensor product spaces.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures. Fixed typos and improved the presentatio

Optimal spline spaces for L2L^2 nn-width problems with boundary conditions

In this paper we show that, with respect to the $L^2$ norm, three classes of functions in $H^r(0,1)$, defined by certain boundary conditions, admit optimal spline spaces of all degrees $\geq r-1$, and all these spline spaces have uniform knots.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. Fixed a typo. Article published in Constructive Approximatio

Sharp error estimates for spline approximation: explicit constants, nn-widths, and eigenfunction convergence

In this paper we provide a priori error estimates in standard Sobolev (semi-)norms for approximation in spline spaces of maximal smoothness on arbitrary grids. The error estimates are expressed in terms of a power of the maximal grid spacing, an appropriate derivative of the function to be approximated, and an explicit constant which is, in many cases, sharp. Some of these error estimates also hold in proper spline subspaces, which additionally enjoy inverse inequalities. Furthermore, we address spline approximation of eigenfunctions of a large class of differential operators, with a particular focus on the special case of periodic splines. The results of this paper can be used to theoretically explain the benefits of spline approximation under $k$-refinement by isogeometric discretization methods. They also form a theoretical foundation for the outperformance of smooth spline discretizations of eigenvalue problems that has been numerically observed in the literature, and for optimality of geometric multigrid solvers in the isogeometric analysis context.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures. Fixed a typo. Article published in M3A

The optimal convergence rate of monotone schemes for conservation laws in the Wasserstein distance

In 1994, Nessyahu, Tadmor and Tassa studied convergence rates of monotone finite volume approximations of conservation laws. For compactly supported, \Lip^+-bounded initial data they showed a first-order convergence rate in the Wasserstein distance. Our main result is to prove that this rate is optimal. We further provide numerical evidence indicating that the rate in the case of \Lip^+-unbounded initial data is worse than first-order.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. Fixed typos. Article published in Journal of Scientific Computin

A mathematical theory for mass lumping and its generalization with applications to isogeometric analysis

Explicit time integration schemes coupled with Galerkin discretizations of time-dependent partial differential equations require solving a linear system with the mass matrix at each time step. For applications in structural dynamics, the solution of the linear system is frequently approximated through so-called mass lumping, which consists in replacing the mass matrix by some diagonal approximation. Mass lumping has been widely used in engineering practice for decades already and has a sound mathematical theory supporting it for finite element methods using the classical Lagrange basis. However, the theory for more general basis functions is still missing. Our paper partly addresses this shortcoming. Some special and practically relevant properties of lumped mass matrices are proved and we discuss how these properties naturally extend to banded and Kronecker product matrices whose structure allows to solve linear systems very efficiently. Our theoretical results are applied to isogeometric discretizations but are not restricted to them.Comment: 28 pages, 24 figures. Accepted manuscrip

Explicit error estimates for spline approximation of arbitrary smoothness in isogeometric analysis

In this paper we provide a priori error estimates with explicit constants for both the $L^2$-projection and the Ritz projection onto spline spaces of arbitrary smoothness defined on arbitrary grids. This extends the results recently obtained for spline spaces of maximal smoothness. The presented error estimates are in agreement with the numerical evidence found in the literature that smoother spline spaces exhibit a better approximation behavior per degree of freedom, even for low smoothness of the functions to be approximated. First we introduce results for univariate spline spaces, and then we address multivariate tensor-product spline spaces and isogeometric spline spaces generated by means of a mapped geometry, both in the single-patch and in the multi-patch case.Comment: 39 pages, 4 figures. Improved the presentation. Article published in Numerische Mathemati

Best low-rank approximations and Kolmogorov n-widths

We relate the problem of best low-rank approximation in the spectral norm for a matrix $A$ to Kolmogorov $n$-widths and corresponding optimal spaces. We characterize all the optimal spaces for the image of the Euclidean unit ball under $A$ and we show that any orthonormal basis in an $n$-dimensional optimal space generates a best rank-$n$ approximation to $A$. We also present a simple and explicit construction to obtain a sequence of optimal $n$-dimensional spaces once an initial optimal space is known. This results in a variety of solutions to the best low-rank approximation problem and provides alternatives to the truncated singular value decomposition. This variety can be exploited to obtain best low-rank approximations with problem-oriented properties.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figur

Optimal spline spaces of higher degree for L2 n-widths

In this paper we derive optimal subspaces for Kolmogorov nn-widths in the L2 norm with respect to sets of functions defined by kernels. This enables us to prove the existence of optimal spline subspaces of arbitrarily high degree for certain classes of functions in Sobolev spaces of importance in finite element methods. We construct these spline spaces explicitly in special cases