A Stabilized Parametric Finite Element Method for Surface Diffusion with an Arbitrary Surface Energy

Abstract: We proposed a structure-preserving stabilized parametric finite element method (SPFEM) for the evolution of closed curves under anisotropic surface diffusion with an arbitrary surface energy $\hat{\gamma}(\theta)$. By introducing a non-negative stabilizing function $k(\theta)$ depending on $\hat{\gamma}(\theta)$, we obtained a novel stabilized conservative weak formulation for the anisotropic surface diffusion. A SPFEM is presented for the discretization of this weak formulation. We construct a comprehensive framework to analyze and prove the unconditional energy stability of the SPFEM under a very mild condition on $\hat{\gamma}(\theta)$. This method can be applied to simulate solid-state dewetting of thin films with arbitrary surface energies, which are characterized by anisotropic surface diffusion and contact line migration. Extensive numerical results are reported to demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy and structure-preserving properties of the proposed SPFEM with anisotropic surface energies $\hat{\gamma}(\theta)$ arising from different applications.