A linear mass-lumped finite element method for the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation: unconditional energy dissipation and length preservation

Abstract

We develop a linear, unconditionally energy-dissipative, mass-lumped finite element method for the highly nonlinear Landau--Lifshitz--Gilbert (LLG) equation on quasi-uniform triangular meshes. The method is built on a projection strategy for enforcing the nonconvex pointwise constraint $|\mathbf{m}| = 1$, whose simultaneous preservation with unconditional energy stability remains challenging for standard finite element discretizations. The key innovation is a unified hybrid finite element-finite difference framework that underlies both the design and the analysis of the proposed method. In the scheme construction, we exploit the weak formulation and nodal structure of mass-lumped finite element method, while incorporating suitable interpolation operators and a node-wise length-preserving mechanism inspired by finite difference discretizations. This combination yields a linear scheme that preserves the node-wise unit-length constraint and satisfies a discrete energy dissipation law. The same hybrid framework also plays a central role in the error analysis, where the weak formulation and quasi-uniform mesh structure of finite elements are combined with interpolation-based and nodewise finite difference method to control the strongly nonlinear damping term and to establish an optimal-order error estimate. More importantly, the proposed method provides a unified framework that systematically integrates the geometric flexibility of finite element method with the pointwise constraint-preserving property of finite difference method, and thus offers a general strategy for designing and analyzing structure-preserving discretizations of constrained dissipative systems. Numerical experiments, including a classical blow-up simulation, confirm the predicted accuracy, energy dissipation, and robustness of the method.