$H^1$-analysis of H3N3-2\textbf{$_\sigma$}-based difference method for fractional hyperbolic equations

A novel H3N3-2$_\sigma$ interpolation approximation for the Caputo fractional derivative of order $\alpha\in(1,2)$ is derived in this paper, which improves the popular L2C formula with (3-$\alpha$)-order accuracy. By an interpolation technique, the second-order accuracy of the truncation error is skillfully estimated. Based on this formula, a finite difference scheme with second-order accuracy both in time and in space is constructed for the initial-boundary value problem of the time fractional hyperbolic equation. It is well known that the coefficients' properties of discrete fractional derivatives are fundamental to the numerical stability of time fractional differential models. We prove the related properties of the coefficients of the H3N3-2$_\sigma$ approximate formula. With these properties, the numerical stability and convergence of the difference scheme are derived immediately by the energy method in the sense of $H^1$-norm. Considering the weak regularity of the solution to the problem at the starting time, a finite difference scheme on the graded meshes based on H3N3-2$_\sigma$ formula is also presented. The numerical simulations are performed to show the effectiveness of the derived finite difference schemes, in which the fast algorithms are employed to speed up the numerical computation.