Finite element approximation of the $p(\cdot)$-Laplacian

Abstract

We study a~priori estimates for the Dirichlet problem of the $p(\cdot)$-Laplacian, \[-\mathrm{div}(|\nabla v|^{p(\cdot)-2} \nabla v) = f. \] We show that the gradients of the finite element approximation with zero boundary data converges with rate $O(h^α)$ if the exponent $p$ is $α$-Hölder continuous. The error of the gradients is measured in the so-called quasi-norm, i.e. we measure the $L^2$-error of $|\nabla v|^{\frac{p-2}{2}} \nabla v$.