∙ Finite Element Approximation of the Fractional Porous Medium Equation ∙
Arxiv, 2024.

We construct a finite element method for the numerical solution of a fractional porous medium equation on a bounded open Lipschitz polytopal domains. The pressure in the model is defined as the solution of a fractional Poisson equation, involving the fractional Neumann Laplacian in terms of its spectral definition. We perform a rigorous passage to the limit as the spatial and temporal discretization parameters tend to zero and show that a subsequence of the sequence of finite element approximations defined by the proposed numerical method converges to a bounded and nonnegative weak solution of the initial-boundary-value problem under consideration. This result can be therefore viewed as a constructive proof of the existence of a nonnegative, energy-dissipative, weak solution to the initial-boundary-value problem for the fractional porous medium equation under consideration, based on the Neumann Laplacian. The convergence proof relies on results concerning the finite element approximation of the spectral fractional Laplacian and compactness techniques for nonlinear partial differential equations, together with properties of the equation, which are shown to be inherited by the numerical method. We also prove that the total energy associated with the problem under consideration exhibits exponential decay in time.

∙ A finite-volume scheme for fractional diffusion on bounded domains ∙
European Journal of Applied Mathematics, 1-21, 2024.

We propose a new fractional Laplacian for bounded domains, expressed as a conservation law and thus particularly suited to finite-volume schemes. Our approach permits the direct prescription of no-flux boundary conditions. We first show the well-posedness theory for the fractional heat equation. We also develop a numerical scheme, which correctly captures the action of the fractional Laplacian and its anomalous diffusion effect. We benchmark numerical solutions for the L'evy-Fokker-Planck equation against known analytical solutions. We conclude by numerically exploring properties of these equations with respect to their stationary states and long-time asymptotics.