H(curl²)-conforming quadrilateral spectral element method for quad-curl problems

In this paper, we propose an $H(\text{curl}^2)$-conforming quadrilateral spectral element method to solve quad-curl problems. Starting with generalized Jacobi polynomials, we first introduce quasi-orthogonal polynomial systems for vector fields over rectangles. $H(\text{curl}^2)$-conforming elements over arbitrary convex quadrilaterals are then constructed explicitly in a hierarchical pattern using the contravariant transform together with the bilinear mapping from the reference square onto each quadrilateral. It is astonishing that both the simplest rectangular and quadrilateral spectral elements possess only 8 degrees of freedom on each physical element. In the sequel, we propose our $H(\text{curl}^2)$-conforming quadrilateral spectral element approximation based on the mixed weak formulation to solve the quad-curl equation and its eigenvalue problem. Numerical results show the effectiveness and efficiency of our method.