A posteriori error analysis for linearization of nonlinear elliptic problems and their discretizations

The paper is devoted to a posteriori quantitative analysis for errors caused by linearization of non-linear elliptic boundary value problems and their finite element realizations. We employ duality theory in convex analysis to derive computable bounds on the difference between the solution of a non-linear problem and the solution of the linearized problem, by using the solution of the linearized problem only. We also derive computable bounds on differences between finite element solutions of the nonlinear problem and finite element solutions of the linearized problem, by using finite element solutions of the linearized problem only. Numerical experiments show that our a posteriori error bounds are efficient.