Subdiffusion with Time-Dependent Coefficients: Improved Regularity and Second-Order Time Stepping

This article concerns second-order time discretization of subdiffusion equations with time-dependent diffusion coefficients. High-order differentiability and regularity estimates are established for subdiffusion equations with time-dependent coefficients. Using these regularity results and a perturbation argument of freezing the diffusion coefficient, we prove that the convolution quadrature generated by the second-order backward differentiation formula, with proper correction at the first time step, can achieve second-order convergence for both nonsmooth initial data and incompatible source term. Numerical experiments are consistent with the theoretical results.