On the time growth of the error of the DG method for advective problems

Abstract

In this paper we derive a priori $L^\infty(L^2)$ and $L^2(L^2)$ error estimates for a linear advection-reaction equation with inlet and outlet boundary conditions. The goal is to derive error estimates for the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method that do not blow up exponentially with respect to time, unlike the usual case when Gronwall's inequality is used. While this is possible in special cases, such as divergence-free advection fields, we take a more general approach using exponential scaling of the exact and discrete solutions. Here we use a special scaling function, which corresponds to time taken along individual pathlines of the flow. For advection fields, where the time massless particles carried by the flow spend inside the spatial domain is uniformly bounded from above by some $\widehat{T}$, we derive $O(h^{p+1/2})$ error estimates where the constant factor depends only on $\widehat{T}$, but not on the final time $T$. This can be interpreted as applying Gronwall's inequality in the error analysis along individual pathlines (Lagrangian setting), instead of physical time (Eulerian setting).