From Lévy walks to fractional material derivative: Pointwise representation and a numerical scheme

The fractional material derivative appears as the fractional operator that governs the dynamics of the scaling limits of Lévy walks - a stochastic process that originates from the famous continuous-time random walks. It is usually defined as the Fourier–Laplace multiplier, therefore, it can be thought of as a pseudo-differential operator. In this paper, we show that there exists a local representation in time and space, pointwise, of the fractional material derivative. This allows us to define it on a space of locally integrable functions which is larger than the original one in which Fourier and Laplace transform exist as functions.

We consider several typical differential equations involving the fractional material derivative and provide conditions for their solutions to exist. In some cases, the analytical solution can be found. For the general initial value problem, we devise a finite volume method and prove its stability, convergence, and conservation of probability. Numerical illustrations verify our analytical findings. Moreover, our numerical experiments show superiority in the computation time of the proposed numerical scheme over a Monte Carlo method applied to the problem of probability density function’s derivation.