Energy stable numerical schemes for the fractional-in-space Cahn–Hilliard equation

Abstract In this paper, a number of energy stable numerical schemes are proposed for the fractional Cahn–Hilliard equation. We prove mass conservation, unique solvability and energy stability for three time semi-discretized schemes based on the first-order semi-implicit scheme, the Crank–Nicolson scheme and the BDF2 scheme respectively. Then we present error analysis for these numerical schemes with the Fourier spectral approximation in space. Some numerical experiments are finally carried out to confirm accuracy and effectiveness of these proposed methods.