A new difference scheme for time fractional heat equations based on the Crank-Nicholson method

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we consider the numerical solution of a time-fractional heat equation, which is obtained from the standard diffusion equation by replacing the first-order time derivative with the Caputo derivative of order α, where 0 < α < 1. The main purpose of this work is to extend the idea on the Crank-Nicholson method to the time-fractional heat equations. By the method of the Fourier analysis, we prove that the proposed method is stable and the numerical solution converges to the exact one with the order O(τ 2-α + h 2), conditionally. Numerical experiments are carried out to support the theoretical claims.