Variational analysis of the discontinuous Galerkin time-stepping method for parabolic equations

Abstract: The discontinuous Galerkin (DG) time-stepping method applied to abstract evolution equation of parabolic type is studied using a variational approach. We establish the inf-sup condition or Babu\v{s}ka--Brezzi condition for the DG bilinear form. Then, a nearly best approximation property and a nearly symmetric error estimate are obtained as corollaries. Moreover, the optimal order error estimates under appropriate regularity assumption on the solution are derived as direct applications of the standard interpolation error estimates. Our method of analysis is new for the DG time-stepping method; it differs from previous works by which the method is formulated as the one-step method. We apply our abstract results to the finite element approximation of a second order parabolic equation with space-time variable coefficient functions in a polyhedral domain, and derive the optimal order error estimates in several norms.