A direct discontinuous Galerkin method for a time-fractional diffusion equation with a Robin boundary condition

Abstract

A time-fractional reaction–diffusion initial-boundary value problem with Robin boundary condition is considered on the domain Ω×[0,T], where Ω=(0,l)⊂R. The coefficient of the zero-order reaction term is not required to be non-negative, which complicates the analysis. In general the unknown solution will have a weak singularity at the initial time t=0. Existence and uniqueness of the solution and pointwise bounds on some of its derivatives are derived. A fully discrete numerical method for computing an approximate solution is investigated; it uses the well-known L1 discretisation on a graded mesh in time and a direct discontinuous Galerkin (DDG) finite element method on a uniform mesh in space. Discrete stability of the computed solution is proved. Its error is bounded in the L2(Ω) and H1(Ω) norms at each discrete time level tn by means of a non-trivial projection of the unknown solution into the finite element space. The L2(Ω) bound is optimal for all tn; the H1(Ω) bound is optimal for tn not close to t=0. An optimal grading of the temporal mesh can be deduced from these bounds. Numerical results show that our analysis is sharp.