Computation and Visualization of Geometric Partial Differential Equations

This is an extended version of my PhD thesis which extends the theory of finite element exterior calculus (FEEC) to parabolic evolution equations. In the extended version I explore some more precise visualizations of the defined quantities as well as explain how the modern theory of functional analysis applies. In the main part I extend the theory of approximating evolution equations in Euclidean space (using FEEC) to hypersurfaces. After these main results I describe some possible extensions to nonlinear equations. A few appendices detail one of the original motivations for getting into this theory in the first place: canonical geometries given as steady state solutions and extremals of certain functionals.