Positive definiteness of real quadratic forms resulting from the variable-step L1-type approximations of convolution operators

The positive definiteness of real quadratic forms with convolution structures plays an important rolein stability analysis for time-stepping schemes for nonlocal operators. In this work, we present a novel analysistool to handle discrete convolution kernels resulting from variable-step approximations for convolution operators.More precisely, for a class of discrete convolution kernels relevant to variable-step L1-type time discretizations, weshow that the associated quadratic form is positive definite under some easy-to-check algebraic conditions. Ourproof is based on an elementary constructing strategy by using the properties of discrete orthogonal convolutionkernels and discrete complementary convolution kernels. To our knowledge, this is the first general result onsimple algebraic conditions for the positive definiteness of variable-step discrete convolution kernels. Using theunified theory, we obtain the stability for some simple nonuniform time-stepping schemes straightforwardly.