A time-space spectral tau method for the time fractional cable equation and its inverse problem

This paper is devoted to the numerical solution of the time fractional cable equation and its inverse problem. The time-space spectral Legendre tau method based on the shifted Legendre polynomial and its operational matrices is used to solve the direct problem. Furthermore, we prove that the approximated solution of this method converges to the exact solution. In addition, the inverse problem is formulated by using the Tikhonov regularization, the stability and convergence for the inverse problem are provided, then we analyse the sensitivity coefficients and apply the nonlinear conjugate gradient method to solve the regularized problem. Finally, some numerical results are carried out to support the theoretical claims. (C) 2018 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.