On Residual-based a Posteriori Error Estimators for Lowest-order Raviart-thomas Element Approximation to Convection-diffusion-reaction Equations

A new technique of residual-type a posteriori error analysis is developed for the lowestorder Raviart-Thomas mixed finite element discretizations of convection-diffusion-reaction equations in twoor three-dimension. Both centered mixed scheme and upwind-weighted mixed scheme are considered. The a posteriori error estimators, derived for the stress variable error plus scalar displacement error in L-norm, can be directly computed with the solutions of the mixed schemes without any additional cost, and are proven to be reliable. Local efficiency dependent on local variations in coefficients is obtained without any saturation assumption, and holds from the cases where convection or reaction is not present to convectionor reaction-dominated problems. The main tools of the analysis are the postprocessed approximation of scalar displacement, abstract error estimates, and the property of modified Oswald interpolation. Numerical experiments are carried out to support our theoretical results and to show the competitive behavior of the proposed posteriori error estimates.