Inf-sup stable space-time Local Discontinuous Galerkin method for the heat equation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an inf-sup stable space-time Local Discontinuous Galerkin method for parabolic problems, providing theoretical analysis and convergence results validated by numerical experiments.

Contribution

It develops a novel space-time LDG method with general meshes, proves inf-sup stability without polynomial inverse estimates, and derives $hp$-a priori error bounds for various polynomial spaces.

Findings

Method is inf-sup stable and well-posed.

Convergence rates are established for multiple polynomial spaces.

Numerical experiments confirm theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We propose and analyze a space-time Local Discontinuous Galerkin method for the approximation of the solution to parabolic problems. The method allows for very general discrete spaces and prismatic space-time meshes. Existence and uniqueness of a discrete solution are shown by means of an inf-sup condition, whose proof does not rely on polynomial inverse estimates. Moreover, for piecewise polynomial spaces satisfying an additional mild condition, we show a second inf-sup condition that provides additional control over the time derivative of the discrete solution. We derive $hp$-a priori error bounds based on these inf-sup conditions, which we use to prove convergence rates for standard, tensor-product, and quasi-Trefftz polynomial spaces. Numerical experiments validate our theoretical results.