  In this paper, we consider anisotropic diffusion with decay, and the
diffusivity coefficient to be a second-order symmetric and positive definite
tensor. It is well-known that this particular equation is a second-order
elliptic equation, and satisfies a maximum principle under certain regularity
assumptions. However, the finite element implementation of the classical
Galerkin formulation for both anisotropic and isotropic diffusion with decay
does not respect the maximum principle.
  We first show that the numerical accuracy of the classical Galerkin
formulation deteriorates dramatically with increase in the decay coefficient
for isotropic medium and violates the discrete maximum principle. However, in
the case of isotropic medium, the extent of violation decreases with mesh
refinement. We then show that, in the case of anisotropic medium, the classical
Galerkin formulation for anisotropic diffusion with decay violates the discrete
maximum principle even at lower values of decay coefficient and does not vanish
with mesh refinement. We then present a methodology for enforcing maximum
principles under the classical Galerkin formulation for anisotropic diffusion
with decay on general computational grids using optimization techniques.
Representative numerical results (which take into account anisotropy and
heterogeneity) are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed
formulation.
