Boundary element monotone iteration scheme for semilinear elliptic partial differential equations

Abstract

The monotone iteration scheme is a constructive method for solving a wide class of semilinear elliptic boundary value problems. With the availability of a supersolution and a subsolution, the iterates converge monotonically to one or two solutions of the nonlinear PDE. However, the rates of such monotone convergence cannot be determined in general. In addition, when the monotone iteration scheme is implemented numerically through the boundary element method, error estimates have not been analyzed in earlier studies. In this paper, we formulate a working assumption to obtain an exponentially fast rate of convergence. This allows a margin δ \delta for the numerical implementation of boundary elements within the range of monotone convergence. We then interrelate several approximate solutions, and use the Aubin-Nitsche lemma and the triangle inequalities to derive error estimates for the Galerkin boundary-element iterates with respect to the H r ( Ω ) H^{r}(\Omega ) , 0 ≤ r ≤ 2 0\le r \le 2 , Sobolev space norms. Such estimates are of optimal order. Furthermore, as a peculiarity, we show that for the nonlinearities that are of separable type, “higher than optimal order” error estimates can be obtained with respect to the mesh parameter h h . Several examples of semilinear elliptic partial differential equations featuring different situations of existence/nonexistence, uniqueness/multiplicity and stability are discussed, computed, and the graphics of their numerical solutions are illustrated.