Numerical scheme for Erdélyi–Kober fractional diffusion equation using Galerkin–Hermite method

Abstract

The aim of this work is to devise and analyse an accurate numerical scheme to solve Erdélyi–Kober fractional diffusion equation. This solution can be thought as the marginal pdf of the stochastic process called the generalized grey Brownian motion (ggBm). The ggBm includes some well-known stochastic processes: Brownian motion, fractional Brownian motion, and grey Brownian motion. To obtain a convergent numerical scheme we transform the fractional diffusion equation into its weak form and apply the discretization of the Erdélyi–Kober fractional derivative. We prove the stability of the solution of the semi-discrete problem and its convergence to the exact solution. Due to the singularity in the time term appearing in the main equation, the proposed method converges slower than first order. Finally, we provide a numerical analysis of the full-discrete problem using orthogonal expansion in terms of Hermite functions.