Spectral Method for the Fractional Laplacian in 2D and 3D

Abstract: A spectral method is considered for approximating the fractional Laplacian and solving the fractional Poisson problem in 2D and 3D unit balls. The method is based on the explicit formulation of the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the fractional Laplacian in the unit balls under the weighted $L<sup>2$ space. The resulting method enjoys spectral accuracy for all fractional index $\alpha\in (0,2)$ and is computationally efficient due to the orthogonality of the basis functions. We also proposed a numerical integration strategy for computing the coefficients. Numerical examples in 2D and 3D are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.