Geometric numerical integrators with complex coefficients for solving differential equations
Prof. Sergio Blanes
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia
Abstract:
Geometric Numerical Integrators (GNIs) are numerical methods for solving
differential equations which preserve most qualitative properties of the exact
solution. Explicit GNIs have shown a high performance for solving many
different problems. This is the case of separable Hamiltonian systems over very
long integrations because they are easy to implement and usually show a high
performance with low error propagations. However, these methods usually require
some fractional backward time step, and they cannot be used on a number of
important problems. We can circumvent this problem if complex coefficients are
allowed to build GNIs. In general, to introduce complex coefficients makes the
numerical schemes more costly, but there are many problems where this is not
the case. In addition, one has to project to the real space, and this
projection can destroy the geometric structure of the numerical solution as
well as the error propagation for long time integrations. GNIs with complex
coefficients can be seen as methods which provide the exact solution of
perturbed problems evolving on a generalized higher dimensional manifold
(backward error analysis). We present some preliminary results on the
preservation of the geometric structure under projection, and this is
illustrated on several numerical examples.