A note on the constants in inverse trace inequalities for polynomials orthogonal to lower-order subspaces

Abstract

We derive sharp, explicit constants in inverse trace inequalities for polynomial functions belonging to $\mathbb{P}_p(T)$ (polynomial space with total degree $p$) that are orthogonal to the lower-order subspace $\mathbb{P}_n(T)$, $n\leq p$, where $T$ denotes a $d$-dimensional simplex. The proofs rely on orthogonal polynomial expansions on reference simplices and on a careful analysis of the eigenvalues of the relevant blocks of the face mass matrices, following the arguments developed in~\cite{warburton2003constants}. The novelty is that the extremal face-mass eigenvalue is computed after removing the polynomial modes of degree at most $n$. This yields inverse trace inequality constants involving the factor $(p-n)(p+n+d+1)$ instead of the classical factor $(p+1)(p+d)$, and therefore quantifies the gain in $p$ available in projection-error estimates. These results are very useful in the $hp$-analysis of the hybrid Galerkin methods, e.g. hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin methods, hybrid high-order methods, etc.