On the positivity of the discrete Green’s function for unstructured finite element discretizations in three dimensions

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we prove \(L^p\) estimates for a regularized Green’s function in three dimensions. We then establish new estimates for the discrete Green’s function and obtain some positivity results. In particular, we prove that the discrete Green’s functions with singularity in the interior of the domain cannot be bounded uniformly with respect of the mesh parameter h. Actually, we show that at the singularity the discrete Green’s function is of order \(h^{-1}\), which is consistent with the behavior of the continuous Green’s function. In addition, we also show that the discrete Green’s function is positive and decays exponentially away from the singularity. We also provide numerically persistent negative values of the discrete Green’s function on Delaunay meshes which then implies a discrete Harnack inequality cannot be established for unstructured finite element discretizations.