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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a variable time-step linear relaxation scheme for time-fractional phase-field equations with a free energy density in general polynomial form. The $L1^{+}$-CN formula is used to discretize the fractional derivative, and an auxiliary variable is introduced to approximate the nonlinear term by directly solving algebraic equations rather than differential-algebraic equations as in the invariant energy quadratization (IEQ) and the scalar auxiliary variable (SAV) approaches. The developed semi-discrete scheme is second-order accurate in time, and the inconsistency between the auxiliary and the original variables does not deteriorate over time. Furthermore, we take the time-fractional volume-conserved Allen-Cahn equation, the time-fractional Cahn-Hilliard equation, and the time-fractional Swift-Hohenberg equation as examples to demonstrate that the constructed schemes are energy stable and that the discrete energy dissipation law is asymptotically compatible with the classical one when the fractional-order parameter $\alpha\rightarrow 1^{-}$. Several numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. In particular, numerical results confirm that the auxiliary variable remains well aligned with the original variable, and the error between them does not continue to increase over time before the system reaches steady state.