An L1 type difference/Galerkin spectral scheme for variable-order time-fractional nonlinear diffusion–reaction equations with fixed delay

A linearized spectral Galerkin/finite difference approach is developed for variable fractional-order nonlinear diffusion–reaction equations with a fixed time delay. The temporal discretization for the variable-order fractional derivative is performed by the L1-approximation. An appropriate basis function in terms of Legendre polynomials is used to construct the Galerkin spectral method for the spatial discretization of the second-order spatial operator. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that the implementation of the iterative process is avoided for the nonlinear term in the variable fractional-order problem. Convergence and stability estimates for the constructed scheme are proved theoretically by discrete energy estimates. Some numerical experiments are finally provided to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the theoretical findings.