Error estimates of semi-discrete and fully discrete finite element methods for the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook equation

Abstract: In two recent publications [Kov{\'a}cs, Larsson, and Mesforush, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 49(6), 2407-2429, 2011] and [Furihata, et al., SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 56(2), 708-731, 2018], strong convergence of the semi-discrete and fully discrete finite element methods is, respectively, proved for the Cahn-Hilliard-Cook (CHC) equation, but without convergence rates revealed. The present work aims to fill the left gap, by recovering strong convergence rates of (fully discrete) finite element methods for the CHC equation. More accurately, strong convergence rates of a full discretization are obtained, based on Galerkin finite element methods for the spatial discretization and the backward Euler method for the temporal discretization. It turns out that the convergence rates heavily depend on the spatial regularity of the noise process. Different from the stochastic Allen-Cahn equation, the presence of the unbounded elliptic operator in front of the cubic nonlinearity in the underlying model makes the error analysis much more challenging and demanding. To address such difficulties, several new techniques and error estimates are developed. Numerical examples are finally provided to confirm the previous findings.