A CONVERGENT METHOD FOR LINEAR HALF-SPACE KINETIC EQUATIONS

We give a unified proof for the well-posedness of a class of linear half-space equations with general incoming data and construct a Galerkin method to numerically resolve this type of equations in a systematic way. Our main strategy in both analysis and numerics includes three steps: adding damping terms to the original half-space equation, using an inf-sup argument and even-odd decomposition to establish the well-posedness of the damped equation, and then recovering solutions to the original half-space equation. The proposed numerical methods for the damped equation is shown to be quasioptimal and the numerical error of approximations to the original equation is controlled by that of the damped equation. This efficient solution to the half-space problem is useful for kinetic-fluid coupling simulations.