Partially adjoint discretizations of adjoint operators and nonconforming finite element exterior calculus

Abstract: This paper concerns the discretizations in pair of adjoint operators between Hilbert spaces so that the adjoint properties can be preserved. Due to the finite-dimensional essence of discretized operators, a new framework, theory of partially adjoint operators, is motivated and presented in this paper, so that adjoint properties can be figured out for finite-dimensional operators which can not be non-trivially densely defined in other background spaces. A formal methodology is presented under the framework to construct partially adjoint discretizations by a conforming discretization (CD) and an accompanied-by-conforming discretization (ABCD) for each of the operators. Moreover, the methodology leads to an asymptotic uniformity of an infinite family of finite-dimensional operators. The validities of the theoretical framework and the formal construction of discretizations are illustrated by a systematic family of in-pair discretizations of the adjoint exterior differential operators. The adjoint properties concerned in the paper are the closed range theorem and the strong dualities, whose preservations have not been well studied yet. Quantified versions of the closed range theorem are established for both adjoint operators and partially adjoint discretizations. The notion Poincare-Alexander-Lefschetz (P-A-L for short) type duality is borrowed for operator theory, and horizontal and vertical P-A-L dualities are figured out for adjoint operators and their analogues are established for partially adjoint discretizations. Particularly by partially adjoint discretizations of exterior differential operators, the Poincare-Lefschetz duality is preserved as an identity, which was not yet obtained before.