A SEMI-LAGRANGIAN SCHEME ON EMBEDDED MANIFOLDS USING GENERALIZED LOCAL POLYNOMIAL REPRODUCTIONS*

We analyze rates of uniform convergence for a class of high-order semi-Lagrangian schemes for first-order, time-dependent partial differential equations on embedded submanifolds of ℝ^d (including advection equations on surfaces) by extending the error analysis of Falcone and Ferretti [SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 35 (1998), pp. 909–940]. A central requirement in our analysis is a remapping operator that achieves both high approximation orders and strong stability, a combination that is challenging to obtain and of independent interest. For this task, we propose a novel mesh-free remapping operator based on ℓ_1 minimizing generalized polynomial reproduction, which uses only point values and requires no additional geometric information from the manifold (such as access to tangent spaces or curvature). Our framework also rigorously addresses the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations on manifolds via projection methods. We include numerical experiments that support the theoretical results and also suggest some new directions for future research.