Time stepping adaptation for subdiffusion problems with non-smooth right-hand sides

Abstract

We consider a time-fractional subdiffusion equation with a Caputo derivative in time, a general second-order elliptic spatial operator, and a right-hand side that is non-smooth in time. The presence of the latter may lead to locking problems in our time stepping procedure recently introduced in [2,4]. Hence, a generalized version of the residual barrier is proposed to rectify the issue. We also consider related alternatives to this generalized algorithm, and, furthermore, show that this new residual barrier may be useful in the case of a negative reaction coefficient.