High accuracy analysis of the lowest order H1-Galerkin mixed finite element method for nonlinear sine-Gordon equations

The lowest order H¹-Galerkin mixed finite element method (for short MFEM) is proposed for a class of nonlinear sine-Gordon equations with the simplest bilinear rectangular element and zero order Raviart-Thomas element. Base on the interpolation operator instead of the traditional Ritz projection operator which is an indispensable tool in the traditional FEM analysis, together with mean-value technique and high accuracy analysis, the superclose properties of order O(h²)/O(h² + τ²) in H¹-norm and H(div;Ω)-norm are deduced for the semi-discrete and the fully-discrete schemes, where h, τ denote the mesh size and the time step, respectively, which improve the results in the previous literature.