A High-Order Surface Finite Element Method Based on Intersections with Background Tetrahedral Meshes

Abstract

This paper develops a high-order surface finite element method for elliptic equations posed on a smooth closed surface implicitly defined as the zero level set of a function in three dimensions. In contrast to classical surface finite element methods that start from a prescribed triangulation of the surface, the proposed method constructs the discrete surface space from the intersections between the exact surface and an ambient tetrahedral mesh. More precisely, an active tetrahedral shell is generated around the implicit surface, and each cut tetrahedron contributes either a triangular or a quadrilateral surface patch according to its intersection pattern with the zero level set. The finite element space is first defined on the resulting piecewise planar cut surface and is then lifted to the exact surface by local level-set-based parameterizations. The resulting method combines features of surface FEM and unfitted/trace methods. Like surface FEM, it produces a conforming finite element space on the exact surface after lifting; however, the geometry and finite element space are induced by intersections with background tetrahedra like unfitted/trace methods. We prove that the local lifting maps agree pointwise across common faces and assemble into a global homeomorphism. We also derive explicit formulas for tangent vectors, Gram matrices, mass and stiffness integrals, and prove stability and high-order derivative estimates for the lifting maps. The latter estimates are formulated in broken Sobolev norms and lead to a Cea-type energy-norm error bound for the proposed high-order lifted surface finite element method.