Spectral element method

In the numerical solution of partial differential equations, a topic in mathematics, the spectral element method (SEM) is a formulation of the finite element method (FEM) that uses high-degree piecewise polynomials as basis functions. The spectral element method was introduced in a 1984 paper^[1] by A. T. Patera. Although Patera is credited with development of the method, his work was a rediscovery of an existing method (see Development History)