Error profile for discontinuous Galerkin time stepping of parabolic PDEs

Abstract

We consider the time discretization of a linear parabolic problem by the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method using piecewise polynomials of degree at most r − 1 in t, for r ≥ 1 and with maximum step size k. It is well known that the spatial L2-norm of the DG error is of optimal order kr globally in time, and is, for r ≥ 2, superconvergent of order k2r− 1 at the nodes. We show that on the n th subinterval (tn− 1,tn), the dominant term in the DG error is proportional to the local right Radau polynomial of degree r. This error profile implies that the DG error is of order kr+ 1 at the right-hand Gauss–Radau quadrature points in each interval. We show that the norm of the jump in the DG solution at the left end point tn− 1 provides an accurate a posteriori estimate for the maximum error over the subinterval (tn− 1,tn).