A comparative study of finite element methods for a class of harmonic map heat flow problems

In this paper, we review and systematically compare three finite element discretization methods for a harmonic map heat flow problem from the unit disk in ${\mathbb{R}}^2$ to the unit sphere in ${\mathbb{R}}^3$ in an unified framework. Numerical tests validate the convergence rates in a regime of smooth solutions and are used to compare the methods in terms of computational efficiency. For one of the methods a discrete inf-sup stability result is derived.