Structure-preserving scheme for fractional nonlinear diffusion equations

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce and analyze a numerical scheme for solving the Cauchy-Dirichlet problem associated with fractional nonlinear diffusion equations. These equations generalize the porous medium equation and the fast diffusion equation by incorporating a fractional diffusion term. We provide a rigorous analysis showing that the discretization preserves main properties of the continuous equations, including algebraic decay in the fractional porous medium case and the extinction phenomenon in the fractional fast diffusion case. The study is supported by extensive numerical simulations. In addition, we propose a novel method for accurately computing the extinction time for the fractional fast diffusion equation and illustrate numerically the convergence of rescaled solutions towards asymptotic profiles near the extinction time.