Convergent filtered schemes for the Monge-Ampère partial differential equation

Abstract

The theory of viscosity solutions has been effective for representing and approximating weak solutions to fully nonlinear Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) such as the elliptic Monge-Ampère equation. The approximation theory of Barles-Souganidis [Barles and Souganidis, Asymptotic Anal., 4 (1999) 271-283] requires that numerical schemes be monotone (or elliptic in the sense of [Oberman, SIAM J. Numer. Anal, 44 (2006) 879-895]. But such schemes have limited accuracy. In this article, we establish a convergence result for nearly monotone schemes. This allows us to construct finite difference discretizations of arbitrarily high-order. We demonstrate that the higher accuracy is achieved when solutions are sufficiently smooth. In addition, the filtered scheme provides a natural detection principle for singularities. We employ this framework to construct a formally second-order scheme for the Monge-Ampère equation and present computational results on smooth and singular solutions.

24 pages, to appear in SINUM