Approximate Solutions to Second-Order Parabolic Equations: evolution systems and discretization

We study the discretization of a linear evolution partial differential equation when its Green function is known. We provide error estimates both for the spatial approximation and for the time stepping approximation. We show that, in fact, an approximation of the Green function is almost as good as the Green function itself. For suitable time-dependent parabolic equations, we explain how to obtain good, explicit approximations of the Green function using the Dyson-Taylor commutator method (DTCM) that we developed in J. Math. Phys. (2010). This approximation for short time, when combined with a bootstrap argument, gives an approximate solution on any fixed time interval within any prescribed tolerance.