Fast evaluation and high accuracy finite element approximation for the time fractional subdiffusion equation

In this article, an efficient algorithm for the evaluation of the Caputo fractional derivative and the superconvergence property of fully discrete finite element approximation for the time fractional subdiffusion equation are considered. First, the space semidiscrete finite element approximation scheme for the constant coefficient problem is derived and supercloseness result is proved. The time discretization is based on the L1-type formula, whereas the space discretization is done using, the fully discrete scheme is developed. Under some regularity assumptions, the superconvergence estimate is proposed and analyzed. Then, extension to the case of variable coefficients is also discussed. To reduce the computational cost, the fast evaluation scheme of the Caputo fractional derivative to solve the fractional diffusion equations is designed. Finally, numerical experiments are presented to support the theoretical results.