Numerical solution of fractional order differential equations by extrapolation

We present an extrapolation type algorithm for the numerical solution of fractional order differential equations. It is based on the new result that the sequence of approximate solutions of these equations, computed by means of a recently published algorithm by Diethelm [6], possesses an asymptotic expansion with respect to the stepsize. From this we conclude that the application of extrapolation is justified, and we obtain a very efficient differential equation solver with practically no additional numerical costs. This is also illustrated by a number of numerical examples. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.