On Adaptive Eulerian-Lagrangian Method for Linear Convection-Diffusion Problems

In this paper, we consider the adaptive Eulerian–Lagrangian method (ELM) for linear convection-diffusion problems. Unlike the classical a posteriori error estimations, we estimate the temporal error along the characteristics and derive a new a posteriori error bound for ELM semi-discretization. With the help of this proposed error bound, we are able to show the optimal convergence rate of ELM for solutions with minimal regularity. Furthermore, by combining this error bound with a standard residual-type estimator for the spatial error, we obtain a posteriori error estimators for a fully discrete scheme. We present numerical tests to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our adaptive algorithm.