A Green’s function approach for the numerical solution of a class of fractional reaction–diffusion equations

•Numerical solutions of fractional RD systems are given using Green’s function formulations.•The scheme proposed exhibit global approximation orders of O(hα)O(hα).•Proposed scheme exhibit better numerical approximation than traditional schemes.

Reaction–diffusion equations with spatial fractional derivatives are increasingly used in various science and engineering fields to describe spatial patterns arising from the interaction of chemical or biochemical reactions and anomalous diffusive transport mechanisms. Most numerical schemes to solve fractional reaction–diffusion equations use finite difference schemes based on the Grünwald–Letnikov formula. This work introduces a new systematic approach based on Green’s function formulations to obtain numerical schemes for fractional reaction–diffusion equations. The idea is to pose an integral formulation of the equation in terms of the underlying Green’s function of the fractional operator to subsequently use numerical quadrature to obtain a set of ordinary differential equations. To illustrate the numerical accuracy of the method, dynamic and steady-state situations are considered and compared with analytical and numerical solutions via Grünwald finite differences schemes. Numerical simulations show that the scheme proposed improves the performance and convergence of traditional finite differences schemes based on Grünwald formula.