An explicit high order method for fractional advection diffusion equations

We propose a high order explicit finite difference method for fractional advection diffusion equations. These equations can be obtained from the standard advection diffusion equations by replacing the second order spatial derivative by a fractional operator of order alpha with 1 < alpha <= 2. This operator is defined by a combination of the left and right Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives. We study the convergence of the numerical method through consistency and stability. The order of convergence varies between two and three and for advection dominated flows is close to three. Although the method is conditionally stable, the restrictions allow wide stability regions. The analysis is confirmed by numerical examples. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.