Finite difference/spectral approximations for the distributed order time fractional reaction-diffusion equation on an unbounded domain

The numerical approximation of the distributed order time fractional reaction-diffusion equation on a semi-infinite spatial domain is discussed in this paper. A fully discrete scheme based on finite difference method in time and spectral approximation using Laguerre functions in space is proposed. The scheme is unconditionally stable and convergent with order O(τ2+Δα2+N(1−m)/2), where τ, Δα, N, and m are the time-step size, step size in distributed-order variable, polynomial degree, and regularity in the space variable of the exact solution, respectively. A pseudospectral scheme is also proposed and analyzed. Some numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme.