A posteriori error analysis for variable-coefficient multiterm time-fractional subdiffusion equations

Abstract

An initial-boundary value problem of subdiffusion type is considered; the temporal component of the differential operator has the form ${\sum }_{i=1}^{\ell }{q}_i(t)D_t^{{\alpha }_i}u(x,t)$, where the $q_i$ are continuous functions, each $D_t^{{\alpha }_i}$ is a Caputo derivative, and the ${\alpha }_i$ lie in $(0,1]$. Maximum/comparison principles for this problem are proved under weak hypotheses. A new positivity result for the multinomial Mittag-Leffler function is derived. A posteriori error bounds are obtained in $L_2(\Omega )$ and $L_{\infty }(\Omega )$, where the spatial domain $\Omega$ lies in $\bR^d$ with $d\in \{1,2,3\}$. An adaptive algorithm based on this theory is tested extensively and shown to yield accurate numerical solutions on the meshes generated by the algorithm.