TY - JOUR T1 - Fast Second-Order Evaluation for Variable-Order Caputo Fractional Derivative with Applications to Fractional Sub-Diffusion Equations AU - Zhang , Jia-Li AU - Fang , Zhi-Wei AU - Sun , Hai-Wei JO - Numerical Mathematics: Theory, Methods and Applications VL - 1 SP - 200 EP - 226 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/02 SN - 15 DO - http://doi.org/10.4208/nmtma.OA-2021-0148 UR - https://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/nmtma/20227.html KW - Variable-order Caputo fractional derivative, exponential-sum-approximation method, fast algorithm, time-fractional sub-diffusion equation, stability and convergence. AB -

In this paper, we propose a fast second-order approximation to the variable-order (VO) Caputo fractional derivative, which is developed based on $L2$-$1_σ$ formula and the exponential-sum-approximation technique. The fast evaluation method can achieve the second-order accuracy and further reduce the computational cost and the acting memory for the VO Caputo fractional derivative. This fast algorithm is applied to construct a relevant fast temporal second-order and spatial fourth-order scheme ($FL2$-$1_σ$ scheme) for the multi-dimensional VO time-fractional sub-diffusion equations. Theoretically, $FL2$-$1_σ$ scheme is proved to fulfill the similar properties of the coefficients as those of the well-studied $L2$-$1_σ$ scheme. Therefore, $FL2$-$1_σ$ scheme is strictly proved to be unconditionally stable and convergent. A sharp decrease in the computational cost and the acting memory is shown in the numerical examples to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.