Convergence analysis of the Jacobi spectral collocation methods for weakly singular nonlocal diffusion equations with volume constraints

This paper is concerned with the efficient spectral solutions for weakly singular nonlocal diffusion equations with Dirichlet-type volume constraints. This type of equation contains an integral operator which typically has a singularity at the midpoint of the integral domain, and the approximation of such the integral operator is one of the essential difficulties in solving the nonlocal equations. To overcome this problem, two-sided Jacobi spectral quadrature rules are proposed to develop a Jacobi spectral collocation method for the nonlocal diffusion equations. Rigorous convergence analysis of the proposed method is presented in $L^\infty$ norms, and we further prove that the Jacobi collocation solution converges to its corresponding local limit as nonlocal interactions vanish. Numerical examples are given to verify the theoretical results.