Two stable methods with numerical experiments for solving the backward heat equation

This paper presents results of some numerical experiments on the backward heat equation. Two quasi-reversibility techniques, explicit filtering and structural perturbation, to regularize the ill-posed backward heat equation have been used. In each of these techniques, two numerical methods, namely Euler and Crank-Nicolson (CN), have been used to advance the solution in time. Crank-Nicolson method is very counter-intuitive for solving the backward heat equation because the dispersion relation of the scheme for the backward heat equation has a singularity (unbounded growth) for a particular wave whose finite wave number depends on the numerical parameters. In comparison, the Euler method shows only catastrophic growth of relatively much shorter waves. Strikingly we find that use of smart filtering techniques with the CN method can give as good a result, if not better, as with the Euler method which is discussed in the main text. Performance of these regularization methods using these numerical schemes have been exemplified. (C) 2010 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.