Contraction and optimality properties of an adaptive Legendre-Galerkin method: the multi-dimensional case
Provides theoretical foundations for adaptive spectral/hp methods in multiple dimensions, but is an incremental extension of prior 1D and Fourier-Galerkin analyses.
The paper constructs a multidimensional Riesz basis in H^1 for adaptive Legendre-Galerkin methods, proving convergence via contraction and optimality in Gevrey sparsity classes. No concrete numerical results are provided.
We analyze the theoretical properties of an adaptive Legendre-Galerkin method in the multidimensional case. After the recent investigations for Fourier-Galerkin methods in a periodic box and for Legendre-Galerkin methods in the one dimensional setting, the present study represents a further step towards a mathematically rigorous understanding of adaptive spectral/$hp$ discretizations of elliptic boundary-value problems. The main contribution of the paper is a careful construction of a multidimensional Riesz basis in $H^1$, based on a quasi-orthonormalization procedure. This allows us to design an adaptive algorithm, to prove its convergence by a contraction argument, and to discuss its optimality properties (in the sense of non-linear approximation theory) in certain sparsity classes of Gevrey type.