Space-time hexahedral finite element methods for parabolic evolution problems

Abstract: We present locally stabilized, conforming space-time finite element methods for parabolic evolution equations on hexahedral decompositions of the space-time cylinder. Tensor-product decompositions allow for anisotropic a priori error estimates, that are explicit in spatial and temporal meshsizes. Moreover, tensor-product finite elements are suitable for anisotropic adaptive mesh refinement strategies provided that an appropriate a posteriori discretization error estimator is available. We present such anisotropic adaptive strategies together with numerical experiments.