Equivalence of mixed and nonconforming methods on general polytopal partitions. Part I: Multiscale and projection methods

We study equivalence, in the context of a variable diffusion problem, between (conforming) mixed methods and (primal) nonconforming methods defined on potentially general polytopal partitions. In this first paper of a series of two, we focus on multiscale and projection methods. For multiscale methods, we establish the first-level equivalence between four different (oversampling-free) approaches, thereby broadening the results of [Chaumont-Frelet, Ern, Lemaire, Valentin; M2AN, 2022]. For projection methods, in turn, we provide a simple criterion (to be checked in practice) for primal/mixed well-posedness and equivalence to hold true. In the process, we also shed a new light on some self-stabilized hybrid methods. Part II of this work will address (general) polytopal element methods.