The Damped Crank–Nicolson Time-Marching Scheme for the Adaptive Solution of the Black–Scholes Equation

This paper is concerned with the derivation of a residual-based a posteriori error estimator and mesh-adaptation strategies for the space-time finite element approximation of parabolic problems with irregular data. Typical applications arise in the field of mathematical finance, where the Black–Scholes equation is used for modeling the pricing of European options. A conforming finite element discretization in space is combined with second-order time discretization by a damped Crank–Nicolson scheme for coping with data irregularities in the model. The a posteriori error analysis is developed within the general framework of the dual weighted residual method for sensitivity-based, goal-oriented error estimation and mesh optimization. In particular, the correct form of the dual problem with damping is considered.