Lightning Plus Polynomial Approximation: Optimal Root-Exponential Convergence for Singular Functions in Corner Domains

This paper presents a rigorous convergence analysis for the lightning plus polynomial approximation scheme, which employs rational approximations constructed with preassigned tapered, exponentially clustered poles. This pole placement strategy was originally introduced by Trefethen and his collaborators for the resolution of corner singularities. Ample numerical results indicate that this scheme achieves root-exponential convergence, and in particular attains the same optimal convergence rate as the best rational approximation to $x^{\alpha }$ on $[0,1]$ established by Stahl.% which is conjectured in [SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 61:2580-2600, 2023]. In this work, we establish optimal root-exponential convergence for the class of prototype functions of the form $g(z)z^{\alpha }$ or $g(z)z^{\alpha }\log z$, where $g$ is analytic on a neighborhood of the sector domain. These results confirm the validity of Conjectures 3.1 and 5.3 stated in [SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 61:2580-2600, 2023], and demonstrate that the choice ${\sigma }_{\mathrm{o}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{t}}=\frac{\sqrt{2(2-\beta )}\pi }{\sqrt{\alpha }}$ achieves the theoretically optimal convergence rate $\mathcal{O}\left(e^{-\sqrt{2(2-\beta )N\alpha }\pi }\right)$. Notably, for the specific case of $\beta =0$, the scheme recovers Stahl’s optimal convergence rate for $x^{\alpha }$. Furthermore, working within the decomposition framework for corner domains proposed by Gopal and Trefethen, this paper provides a rigorous proof of optimal root-exponential convergence for lightning plus polynomial approximation problems on corner domains, and explicitly derives the optimal pole clustering parameter.