Richardson Extrapolation and Defect Correction of Mixed Finite Element Methods for Elliptic Optimal Control Problems

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper asymptotic error expansions for mixed finite element approximations to a class of second order elliptic optimal control problems are derived under rectangular meshes, and the Richardson extrapolation of two different schemes and interpolation defect correction can be applied to increase the accuracy of the approximations. As a byproduct, we illustrate that all the approximations of higher accuracy can be used to form a class of a posteriori error estimators of the mixed finite element method for optimal control problems.