Design and performance of a space-time virtual element method for the heat equation on prismatic meshes

Abstract: We present a space-time virtual element method for the discretization of the heat equation, which is defined on general prismatic meshes and variable degrees of accuracy. Strategies to handle efficiently the space-time mesh structure are discussed. We perform convergence tests for the $h$- and $hp$-versions of the method in case of smooth and singular solutions, and test space-time adaptive mesh refinements driven by a residual-type error indicator.