High dimensional finite elements for time-space multiscale parabolic equations

The paper develops the essentially optimal sparse tensor product finite element method for a parabolic equation in a domain in ℝd$\mathbb {R}^{d}$ which depends on a microscopic scale in space and a microscopic scale in time. We consider the critical self similar case which has the most interesting homogenization limit. We solve the high dimensional time-space multiscale homogenized equation, which provides the solution to the homogenized equation which describes the multiscale equation macroscopically, and the corrector which encodes the microscopic information. For obtaining an approximation within a prescribed accuracy, the method requires an essentially optimal number of degrees of freedom that is essentially equal to that for solving a macroscopic parabolic equation in a domain in ℝd$\mathbb {R}^{d}$. A numerical corrector is deduced from the finite element solution. Numerical examples for one and two dimensional problems confirm the theoretical results. Although the theory is developed for problems with one spatial microscopic scale, we show numerically that the method is capable of solving problems with more than one spatial microscopic scale.