Quasi-optimal and pressure robust discretizations of the Stokes equations by moment- and divergence-preserving operators

Abstract: We approximate the solution of the Stokes equations by a new quasi-optimal and pressure robust discontinuous Galerkin discretization of arbitrary order. This means quasi-optimality of the velocity error independent of the pressure. Moreover, the discretization is well-defined for any load which is admissible for the continuous problem and it also provides classical quasi-optimal estimates for the sum of velocity and pressure errors. The key design principle is a careful discretization of the load involving a linear operator, which maps discontinuous Galerkin test functions onto conforming ones thereby preserving the discrete divergence and certain moment conditions on faces and elements.