1. Introduction
In [
1], a collocation–quadrature method is studied in weighted
spaces as well as in the space of continuous functions for a Volterra-like integral equation of the form
where
(with a possible singularity at
) and
are given (in general complex-valued) functions, and
is a fixed parameter (see [
1], Section 3.2). Here, we are interested in the numerical solution of Volterra integral equations of the second kind,
where the functions
and
with
are given. In particular, we prefer global polynomials as ansatz functions for the approximating solution
and the application of Gaussian rules for the approximation of the integral operator. We do this with the aim not to restrict the convergence rate of the method by taking piecewise polynomials of fixed degree. As a consequence, the convergence rate of the method is only bounded by the smoothness of the given data
and
The following result (see Lemma 1) on the solvability of (
1) is well known and very special for Volterra integral equations of the above type. The space of continuous functions
is denoted by
and equipped with the infinity norm
, making
a Banach space.
Equation (
1) is written in operator form as
where
and
denote the identity and the integral operator
respectively. In particular, the special case of Volterra convolution equations is of interest, where the kernel function of the integral operator is of the form
with a given continuous function
Often the kernel function of the integral operator is not continuous but weakly singular along the line
of triangle
That is why, in what follows, we consider a kernel function of the form
with a continuous function
or, in case of the convolution equation, of the form
(i.e.,
) with a continuous function
where
is a given real number. The respective integral operator is denoted by
i.e.,
The corresponding integral Equations (
1) and (
4) are written as
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In
Section 2 we collect a series of mapping properties of the above-mentioned integral operators in weighted
spaces as well as in the space of continuous functions. In
Section 3 we describe the collocation–quadrature method, study its stability and convergence, and prove convergence rates for the approximate solutions. In
Section 4 we answer the question under which conditions it is possible to apply the famous Nyström method (see, for example, [
2], Chapter 4, and [
3], Section 12.2) together with the theory of collectively compact operator sequences to the Volterra integral equations under consideration. We will see that from a theoretical point of view (concerning stability and convergence rates) the collocation–quadrature method outperforms the Nyström method. The present paper concentrates on these theoretical issues. The discussion of computational aspects of the proposed collocation–quadrature method is reserved for forthcoming studies.
2. Mapping Properties of the Involved Integral Operators
From ([
3], Theorems 3.10 and 10.17), we infer the following Lemma.
denotes the closure of the set
.
Lemma 1. If is continuous, then the linear operator is invertible, i.e., for every there exists a unique solution of (6). In the following we try to extend this result to weighted spaces of continuous functions as well as weighted spaces of square integrable functions. First, we weaken the assumption on the kernel function
in Lemma 3. Let
denote the Jacobi weight function
For
we define the space
as the set of all continuous functions
such that
belongs to
i.e., for which the finite limits
and
exist. Equipped with the norm
becomes a Banach space.
refers to the closed subspace of
of all functions
for which
Obviously, the map
is an isometric isomorphism. Thus, the operator
is invertible if and only if the operator
is invertible. Note that
Consequently, a simple conclusion of Lemma 1 is the following corollary:
Corollary 1. If and the function is continuous, then for every Equation (6) has a unique solution We continue to discuss the unique solvability in In comparison to the previous corollary, in the following lemma we weaken the condition on the kernel function part In what follows we assume that there are non-negative numbers such that the following condition (A) is fulfilled:
- (A)
The function is continuous.
Lemma 2. Let condition (A)
be satisfied, and take such that and Moreover, assume that Then, for (6) has only the trivial solution in Proof. With
we have, for
By induction we prove that, for
where the constant
does not depend on
and
Of course, this is true for
with
due to (
8). Let (
9) be true for some
Then, using (
8) again, we get
where, using the substitution
Thus, we obtain (
9) for
and
Now, we choose
such that
Then, due to (
9),
Let
be a solution of the homogeneous equation
Then,
u is also a solution of
, and, again by induction, we can prove
Indeed, from
and (
10) we see that (
11) is true for
If we assume that (
11) is true for some
then
We send
n to infinity in (
11) and conclude that
for all
□
For
refers to the Hilbert space of all with respect to the Jacobi weight
square integrable functions on the interval
equipped with the inner product
and the norm
In what follows, denotes a generic positive constant, which can assume different values in different places. Moreover, indicates that does not depend on Let denote the value
Lemma 3. Assume that is continuous. Then, for and the operator is compact.
Proof. Let
and
Then, using the substitution
where the constant
does not depend on
Now, for
we can estimate
We estimate these three terms separately. Firstly, we have
where, taking into account
Secondly, let
Then, there is an
such that
for all
with
Thus, for
Finally, we refer to the inequality (see [
4], Chapter 1 (5.2))
and obtain
with
if
In case of
, we choose
such that
and
Then, using the equality
we get
Hence,
As a conclusion of the relations (
12), (
13), (
14), and (
16), the set
is uniformly bounded and equicontinuous. It remains to refer to the Arzela–Ascoli theorem (see [
2], Section 1.2.1). □
Corollary 2. If condition (A)
is valid, then the operator is compact if Proof. We can write
where
and
The mappings
and
are isometrical isomorphisms, and from Lemma 3, the operator
is compact. Hence,
is compact. □
4. What About the Nyström Method?
In different papers the Nyström method was studied for Volterra integral equations (see, for example, [
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16] for linear equations and [
17,
18] for nonlinear equations).
Let us use the interpolation operator
to construct a Nyström approximation for the solution of (
6) based on a product integration rule, namely, (cf. [
13], (6),(7))
with
With the aim of studying the Nyström method for Equation (
6) in the weighted space
of continuous functions, we multiply equation
by
collocate at the points
and take
as the unknowns. This results in the following system:
where
Note that we obtain the same system (
65) if we consider equation
(see (
7)) in the
space of continuous functions on
and approximate the operator
by
That is why we will study (
63) in the
space assuming that
is a continuous function.
We refer to the notation in ([
6], Chapter 6) and consider an operator
with
where
is a fixed real number. For a function
and
we use the following notations (cf. the beginning of
Section 2):
Let us consider conditions (K1)–(K4) in ([
6], p. 356) (cf. also [
19]). The first condition is
We estimate
where (also hereafter)
and
Note that, for
and all
the integral
is finite if and only if
Let us turn to the second condition:
Let
Then,
Let us estimate these three terms separately. Analogously to (
68) we get
where, for
if
For the second term we get
where, for
if and only if
Finally, we estimate the third term and obtain
where, for
and
(see also (
15)) for
if
For
we choose
such that
and again use the relation (
15) to obtain
if
and
is small enough.
Note that (K1) and (K2) are necessary and sufficient for
to be a compact operator (see [
6], Proposition 5.3.2). Thus, by using (
69), (
71), (
72), and (
73), we obtain the following corollary:
Corollary 5. The operator is compact if one of the following conditions is satisfied:
- (A)
There exist numbers such thatand, for all - (B)
There exist numbers and such that, for and, for all
The following two conditions (K3) and (K4) concern the question as to whether the operators
form a collectively compact and strongly converging operator sequence. In particular, the following lemma is true (see [
6], Lemma 6.1.1, cf. also [
19], Section 2, Lemma and [
20], Section 3, Theorem 1).
Lemma 9. Suppose that the conditions (K1) and (K2) are in force. Then, the operators are collectively compact and strongly convergent to if and only if the conditions (K3) and (K4) below are satisfied.
Remembering the definition of
(see (
63)), we consider the third condition:
To obtain conditions under which (
74) is fulfilled, we estimate
where, for some
and all
the integral
is finite if and only if (compare with (
69))
Moreover, we have to find conditions under which
is true for all
and for some
Let us restrict to
and try to apply Lemma 4. If we set
we can replace condition (
76) with
Applying Lemma 4 when
, we obtain the conditions
and, for some
and all
Let us turn to the last condition:
We represent
in the form
where
with
and
as well as
Let
and
With the help of Lemma 4, we have
for all
and
For fixed
with
and
define
and equip the space
with the norm
It is easy to see that
such that the Banach–Steinhaus theorem (principle of uniform boundedness), together with (
81) implies, for all
Considering
as a linear map from
into the dual space of
and again applying the principle of uniform boundedness to (
82), we get
Together with (
82), this implies
From the estimate of the terms
and
above (cf. (
71) and (
73)), we infer that, for
where
if
and
(with some sufficiently small
) if
supposing that
and
(Note that it is possible to weaken the conditions on the parameters if we use a respective weighted
-space,
instead of the space
) Relation (
84) implies
if the conditions on the parameters
are fulfilled. The most critical question is under which conditions the limit relation
is true. Let us assume that the function
is continuous. Since, for
we get
i.e., we can obtain (
86) only if
As an example, let us consider the situation where the function
is continuous, and we choose
Then condition (A) of Corollary 5 is satisfied for
Also, (
76) and (
85) hold true. Note that (
85) was above proven for
But, as already mentioned in the brackets after (
85), this condition can be weakened to
in the present situation. Thus, to be able to apply the theory of collectively compact operator sequences, due to (
87), we have to assume that
for all
If
is the solution of (
65) (when
) and
is the respective Nyström interpolant, then we have the error estimate (see [
3], Theorem 10.9)
In order to obtain the convergence rates from this estimate, it is necessary to assume smoothness properties of the function
while for the collocation–quadrature method studied in
Section 3, only smoothness properties of the function
are needed (see condition (D)).