Implicit and Fully Discrete Approximation of the Supercooled Stefan Problem in the Presence of Blow-Ups

SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, Volume 62, Issue 3, Page 1145-1170, June 2024.
Abstract.We consider two approximation schemes of the one-dimensional supercooled Stefan problem and prove their convergence, even in the presence of finite time blow-ups. All proofs are based on a probabilistic reformulation recently considered in the literature. The first scheme is a version of the time-stepping scheme studied by Kaushansky et al. [Ann. Appl. Probab., 33 (2023), pp. 274–298], but here the flux over the free boundary and its velocity are coupled implicitly. Moreover, we extend the analysis to more general driving processes than Brownian motion. The second scheme is a Donsker-type approximation, also interpretable as an implicit finite difference scheme, for which global convergence is shown under minor technical conditions. With stronger assumptions, which apply in cases without blow-ups, we obtain additionally a convergence rate arbitrarily close to 1/2. Our numerical results suggest that this rate also holds for less regular solutions, in contrast to explicit schemes, and allow a sharper resolution of the discontinuous free boundary in the blow-up regime.