The Bubble Transform: A New Tool for Analysis of Finite Element Methods

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the construction of a linear operator, referred to as the bubble transform, which maps scalar functions defined on $${\varOmega }\subset \mathbb {R}^n$$Ω⊂Rn into a collection of functions with local support. In fact, for a given simplicial triangulation $${\fancyscript{T}}$$T of $${\varOmega }$$Ω, the associated bubble transform $${\fancyscript{B}}_{{\fancyscript{T}}}$$BT produces a decomposition of functions on $${\varOmega }$$Ω into a sum of functions with support on the corresponding macroelements. The transform is bounded in both $$L^2$$L2 and the Sobolev space $$H^1$$H1, it is local, and it preserves the corresponding continuous piecewise polynomial spaces. As a consequence, this transform is a useful tool for constructing local projection operators into finite element spaces such that the appropriate operator norms are bounded independently of polynomial degree. The transform is basically constructed by two families of operators, local averaging operators and rational trace preserving cutoff operators.