Pseudo transient continuation and time marching methods for Monge-Ampere type equations

Abstract: We present two numerical methods for the fully nonlinear elliptic Monge-Ampere equation. The first is a pseudo transient continuation method and the second is a pure pseudo time marching method. The methods are proven to converge to a strictly convex solution of a natural discrete variational formulation with $C<sup>1$ conforming approximations. The assumption of existence of a strictly convex solution to the discrete problem is proven for smooth solutions of the continuous problem and supported by numerical evidence for non smooth solutions.