Regularity of solutions to space--time fractional wave equations: a PDE approach

Abstract: We consider an evolution equation involving the fractional powers, of order $s \in (0,1)$, of a symmetric and uniformly elliptic second order operator and Caputo fractional time derivative of order $\gamma \in (1,2]$. Since it has been shown useful for the design of numerical techniques for related problems, we also consider a quasi--stationary elliptic problem that comes from the realization of the spatial fractional diffusion as the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map for a nonuniformly elliptic problem posed on a semi--infinite cylinder. We provide existence and uniqueness results together with energy estimates for both problems. In addition, we derive regularity estimates both in time and space; the time--regularity results show that the usual assumptions made in the numerical analysis literature are problematic