Optimal Approximation of Elliptic Problems by Linear and Nonlinear Mappings
Erich Novak, Stephan Dahlke, Winfried Sickel · DROPS (Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics) · 2005
We study the optimal approximation of the solution of an operator equation Au=f by linear mappings of rank n and compare this with the best n-term approximation with respect to an optimal Riesz basis. We consider worst case errors, where f is an element of the unit ball of a Hilbert space. We apply our results to boundary value problems for elliptic PDEs on an arbitrary bounded Lipschitz domain. Here we prove that approximation by linear mappings is as good as the best n-term approximation with respect to an optimal Riesz basis. Our results are concerned with approximation, not with computation. Our goal is to understand better the possibilities of nonlinear approximation.