Inf-sup stable space-time Local Discontinuous Galerkin method for the heat equation

Abstract: We propose and analyze a space-time Local Discontinuous Galerkin method for the approximation of the solution to parabolic problems. The method allows for very general discrete spaces and prismatic space-time meshes. Existence and uniqueness of a discrete solution are shown by means of an inf-sup condition, whose proof does not rely on polynomial inverse estimates. Moreover, for piecewise polynomial spaces satisfying an additional mild condition, we show a second inf-sup condition that provides an additional control of the time derivative of the discrete solution. We derive hp-a priori error bounds based on these inf-sup conditions, which we use to prove convergence rates for standard, tensor-product, and quasi-Trefftz polynomial spaces. Numerical experiments validate our theoretical results.