Error analysis for the implicit boundary integral method

Abstract The implicit boundary integral method (IBIM) provides a framework to construct quadrature rules on regular lattices for integrals over irregular domain boundaries. This work provides a systematic error analysis for IBIMs on uniform Cartesian grids for boundaries with different degrees of regularity. First, it is shown that the quadrature error gains an additional order of $$\frac{d-1}{2}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mfrac> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mfrac> </mml:math> from the curvature for a strongly convex smooth boundary due to the “randomness” in the signed distances. This gain is discounted for degenerated convex surfaces. Then the extension of error estimate to general boundaries under some special circumstances is considered, including how quadrature error depends on the boundary’s local geometry relative to the underlying grid. Bounds on the variance of the quadrature error under random shifts and rotations of the lattices are also derived.