Regularity of Solutions to Space–Time Fractional Wave Equations: A PDE Approach

Abstract

Abstract We consider an evolution equation involving the fractional powers, of order s ∈ (0, 1), of a symmetric and uniformly elliptic second order operator and Caputo fractional time derivative of order γ ∈ (1, 2]. Since it has been shown useful for the design of numerical techniques for related problems, we also consider a quasi–stationary elliptic problem that comes from the realization of the spatial fractional diffusion as the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map for a nonuniformly elliptic problem posed on a semi–infinite cylinder. We provide existence and uniqueness results together with energy estimates for both problems. In addition, we derive regularity estimates both in time and space; the time–regularity results show that the usual assumptions made in the numerical analysis literature are problematic.