Codice 12/2015 Titolo A $C^1$ virtual element method for the Cahn-Hilliard equation with polygonal meshes Data 2015-03-16 Autore/i Antonietti, P. F.; Beirao da Veiga, L.; Scacchi, S.; Verani, M. Link Download full text Abstract In this paper we develop an evolution of the $C^1$ virtual elements of minimal degree for the approximation of the Cahn-Hilliard equation. The proposed method has the advantage of being conforming in $H^2$ and making use of a very simple set of degrees of freedom, namely 3 degrees of freedom per vertex of the mesh. Moreover, although the present method is new also on triangles, it can make use of general polygonal meshes. As a theoretical and practical support, we prove the convergence of the semi-discrete scheme and investigate the performance of the fully discrete scheme through a set of numerical tests.