Sparse space-time spectral methods can time-step by peel and pass

Abstract

Global space-time spectral methods give spectral accuracy in time but typically require the whole space-time history to be resolved and stored on a single tensor-product domain $T \times Ω$. We record that in an endpoint-benign Legendre or Chebyshev-$T$ time basis, whose polynomials all equal one at the right endpoint, the final time slice of a space-time block is recovered exactly by summing the stored coefficients along the time index. This peel-and-pass step is a special case of a Jacobi endpoint identity, which also gives derivative formulae for higher-order equations. Writing such higher-order equations as first-order systems preserves the benign value-passing structure. The result is a sparse space-time spectral element method that advances block by block, stores only one block, and needs far fewer time coefficients per solve for long-time problems. We prove the identities, give resident-memory, solve-cost and error-propagation models, and demonstrate the method on $(1{+}1)$D heat, wave and Klein--Gordon equations, and on $(2{+}1)$D fractional heat on the disk with weighted Zernike polynomials in space.