Bridging the Hybrid High-Order and Virtual Element methods

We present a unifying viewpoint on hybrid high-order and virtual element methods on general polytopal meshes in dimension $2$ or $3$, in terms of both formulation and analysis. We focus on a model Poisson problem. To build our bridge (i) we transcribe the (conforming) virtual element method into the hybrid high-order framework and (ii) we prove $H^m$ approximation properties for the local polynomial projector in terms of which the local virtual element discrete bilinear form is defined. This allows us to perform a unified analysis of virtual element/hybrid high-order methods, that differs from standard virtual element analyses by the fact that the approximation properties of the underlying virtual space are not explicitly used. As a complement to our unified analysis we also study interpolation in local virtual spaces, shedding light on the differences between the conforming and nonconforming cases.