Positivity-preserving and energy-dissipating discontinuous Galerkin methods for nonlinear nonlocal Fokker–Planck equations

Abstract This paper is concerned with structure-preserving numerical approximations for a class of nonlinear nonlocal Fokker– Planck equations, which admit a gradient flow structure and find application in diverse contexts. The solutions, representing density distributions, must be non-negative and satisfy a specific energy dissipation law. We design an arbitrary high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method tailored for these model problems. Both semi-discrete and fully discrete schemes are shown to admit the energy dissipation law for non-negative numerical solutions. To ensure the preservation of positivity in cell averages at all time steps, we introduce a local flux correction applied to the DDG diffusive flux. Subsequently, a hybrid algorithm is presented, utilizing a positivity-preserving limiter, to generate positive and energy-dissipating solutions. Numerical examples are provided to showcase the high resolution of the numerical solutions and the verified properties of the DG schemes.