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In this paper, we develop a family of third order asymptotic-preserving (AP) and asymptotically accurate (AA) diagonally implicit Runge-Kutta (DIRK) time discretization methods for the stiff hyperbolic relaxation systems and kinetic Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) model in the semi-Lagrangian (SL) setting. The methods are constructed based on an accuracy analysis of the SL scheme for stiff hyperbolic relaxation systems and kinetic BGK model in the limiting fluid regime when the Knudsen number approaches $0$. An extra order condition for the asymptotic third order accuracy in the limiting regime is derived. Linear Von Neumann stability analysis of the proposed third order DIRK methods are performed to a simplified two-velocity linear kinetic model. Extensive numerical tests are presented to demonstrate the AA, AP and stability properties of our proposed schemes.

In this paper, we construct a novel Eulerian-Lagrangian finite volume (ELFV) method for nonlinear scalar hyperbolic equations in one space dimension. It is well known that the exact solutions to such problems may contain shocks though the initial conditions are smooth, and direct numerical methods may suffer from restricted time step sizes. To relieve the restriction, we propose an ELFV method, where the space-time domain was separated by the partition lines originated from the cell interfaces whose slopes are obtained following the Rakine-Hugoniot junmp condition. Unfortunately, to avoid the intersection of the partition lines, the time step sizes are still limited. To fix this gap, we detect effective troubled cells (ETCs) and carefully design the influence region of each ETC, within which the partitioned space-time regions are merged together to form a new one. Then with the new partition of the space-time domain, we theoretically prove that the proposed first-order scheme with Euler forward time discretization is total-variation-diminishing and maximum-principle-preserving with {at least twice} larger time step constraints than the classical first order Eulerian method for Burgers' equation. Numerical experiments verify the optimality of the designed time step sizes., Comment: Submitted to Mathematics of Computation

In this paper, we propose a novel Local Macroscopic Conservative (LoMaC) low rank tensor method with discontinuous Galerkin (DG) discretization for the physical and phase spaces for simulating the Vlasov-Poisson (VP) system. The LoMaC property refers to the exact local conservation of macroscopic mass, momentum and energy at the discrete level. The recently developed LoMaC low rank tensor algorithm (arXiv:2207.00518) simultaneously evolves the macroscopic conservation laws of mass, momentum and energy using the kinetic flux vector splitting; then the LoMaC property is realized by projecting the low rank kinetic solution onto a subspace that shares the same macroscopic observables. This paper is a generalization of our previous work, but with DG discretization to take advantage of its compactness and flexibility in handling boundary conditions and its superior accuracy in the long term. The algorithm is developed in a similar fashion as that for a finite difference scheme, by observing that the DG method can be viewed equivalently in a nodal fashion. With the nodal DG method, assuming a tensorized computational grid, one will be able to (1) derive differentiation matrices for different nodal points based on a DG upwind discretization of transport terms, and (2) define a weighted inner product space based on the nodal DG grid points. The algorithm can be extended to the high dimensional problems by hierarchical Tucker decomposition of solution tensors and a corresponding conservative projection algorithm. In a similar spirit, the algorithm can be extended to DG methods on nodal points of an unstructured mesh, or to other types of discretization, e.g. the spectral method in velocity direction. Extensive numerical results are performed to showcase the efficacy of the method., arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2207.00518

In this paper, we propose a conservative low rank tensor method to approximate nonlinear Vlasov solutions. The low rank approach is based on our earlier work (arxiv: 2106.08834). It takes advantage of the fact that the differential operators in the Vlasov equation are tensor friendly, based on which we propose to dynamically and adaptively build up low rank solution basis by adding new basis functions from discretization of the differential equation, and removing basis from a singular value decomposition (SVD)-type truncation procedure. For the discretization, we adopt a high order finite difference spatial discretization together with a second order strong stability preserving multi-step time discretization. While the SVD truncation will remove the redundancy in representing the high dimensional Vlasov solution, it will destroy the conservation properties of the associated full conservative scheme. In this paper, we develop a conservative truncation procedure with conservation of mass, momentum and kinetic energy densities. The conservative truncation is achieved by an orthogonal projection onto a subspace spanned by $1$, $v$ and $v^2$ in the velocity space associated with a weighted inner product. Then the algorithm performs a weighted SVD truncation of the remainder, which involves a scaling, followed by the standard SVD truncation and rescaling back. The algorithm is further developed in high dimensions with hierarchical Tucker tensor decomposition of high dimensional Vlasov solutions, overcoming the curse of dimensionality. An extensive set of nonlinear Vlasov examples are performed to show the effectiveness and conservation property of proposed conservative low rank approach. Comparison is performed against the non-conservative low rank tensor approach on conservation history of mass, momentum and energy.

In this paper, we propose a novel Local Macroscopic Conservative (LoMaC) low rank tensor method for simulating the Vlasov-Poisson (VP) system. The LoMaC property refers to the exact local conservation of macroscopic mass, momentum and energy at the discrete level. This is a follow-up work of our previous development of a conservative low rank tensor approach for Vlasov dynamics (arXiv:2201.10397). In that work, we applied a low rank tensor method with a conservative singular value decomposition (SVD) to the high dimensional VP system to mitigate the curse of dimensionality, while maintaining the local conservation of mass and momentum. However, energy conservation is not guaranteed, which is a critical property to avoid unphysical plasma self-heating or cooling. The new ingredient in the LoMaC low rank tensor algorithm is that we simultaneously evolve the macroscopic conservation laws of mass, momentum and energy using a flux-difference form with kinetic flux vector splitting; then the LoMaC property is realized by projecting the low rank kinetic solution onto a subspace that shares the same macroscopic observables by a conservative orthogonal projection. The algorithm is extended to the high dimensional problems by hierarchical Tuck decomposition of solution tensors and a corresponding conservative projection algorithm. Extensive numerical tests on the VP system are showcased for the algorithm's efficacy., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2201.10397

We present fourth-order conservative non-splitting semi-Lagrangian (SL) Hermite essentially non-oscillatory (HWENO) schemes for linear transport equations with applications for nonlinear problems including the Vlasov-Poisson system, the guiding center Vlasov model, and the incompressible Euler equations in the vorticity-stream function formulation. The proposed SL HWENO schemes combine a weak formulation of the characteristic Galerkin method with two newly constructed HWENO reconstruction methods. Fourth-order accuracy is accomplished in both space and time under a non-splitting setting. Mass conservation naturally holds due to the weak formulation of the characteristic Galerkin method and the design of the HWENO reconstructions. We apply a positive-preserving limiter to maintain the positivity of numerical solutions when needed. Although the proposed SL framework allows us to take large time steps for improving computational efficiency, it also brings challenges to the spatial reconstruction technique; we construct two kind of novel HWENO reconstructions to fit the need for the proposed SL framework. Abundant benchmark tests are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed SL HWENO schemes.

We propose an Eulerian-Lagrangian (EL) Runge-Kutta (RK) discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for wave equations. The method is designed based on the ELDG method for transport problems [J. Comput. Phy. 446: 110632, 2021.], which tracks solution along approximations to characteristics in the DG framework, allowing extra large time stepping sizes with stability. The wave equation can be written as a first order hyperbolic system. Considering each characteristic family, a straightforward application of ELDG will be to transform to the characteristic variables, evolve them on associated characteristic related space-time regions, and transform them back to the original variables. However, the mass conservation could not be guaranteed in a general setting. In this paper, we formulate a mass conservative semi-discrete ELDG method by decomposing each variable into two parts, each of them associated with a different characteristic family. As a result, four different quantities are evolved in EL fashion and recombined to update the solution. The fully discrete scheme is formulated by using method-of-lines RK methods, with intermediate RK solutions updated on the background mesh. Numerical results on 1D and 2D wave equations are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed ELDG method. These include the high order spatial and temporal accuracy, stability with extra large time stepping size, and mass conservative property., Comment: 31 pages

We propose a low-rank tensor approach to approximate linear transport and nonlinear Vlasov solutions and their associated flow maps. The approach takes advantage of the fact that the differential operators in the Vlasov equation is tensor friendly, based on which we propose a novel way to dynamically and adaptively build up low-rank solution basis by adding new basis functions from discretization of the PDE, and removing basis from an SVD-type truncation procedure. For the discretization, we adopt a high order finite difference spatial discretization and a second order strong stability preserving multi-step time discretization. We apply the same procedure to evolve the dynamics of the flow map in a low-rank fashion, which proves to be advantageous when the flow map enjoys the low rank structure, while the solution suffers from high rank or displays filamentation structures. Hierarchical Tucker decomposition is adopted for high dimensional problems. An extensive set of linear and nonlinear Vlasov test examples are performed to show the high order spatial and temporal convergence of the algorithm with mesh refinement up to SVD-type truncation, the significant computational savings of the proposed low-rank approach especially for high dimensional problems, the improved performance of the flow map approach for solutions with filamentations.

In this paper, we propose an efficient, high order accurate and asymptotic-preserving (AP) semi-Lagrangian (SL) method for the BGK model with constant or spatially dependent Knudsen number. The spatial discretization is performed by a mass conservative nodal discontinuous Galerkin (NDG) method, while the temporal discretization of the stiff relaxation term is realized by stiffly accurate diagonally implicit Runge-Kutta (DIRK) methods along characteristics. Extra order conditions are enforced for asymptotic accuracy (AA) property of DIRK methods when they are coupled with a semi-Lagrangian algorithm in solving the BGK model. A local maximum principle preserving (LMPP) limiter is added to control numerical oscillations in the transport step. Thanks to the SL and implicit nature of time discretization, the time stepping constraint is relaxed and it is much larger than that from an Eulerian framework with explicit treatment of the source term. Extensive numerical tests are presented to verify the high order AA, efficiency and shock capturing properties of the proposed schemes.

In this paper, we consider a finite difference grid-based semi-Lagrangian approach in solving the Vlasov-Poisson (VP) system. Many of existing methods are based on dimensional splitting, which decouples the problem into solving linear advection problems, see {\em Cheng and Knorr, Journal of Computational Physics, 22(1976)}. However, such splitting is subject to the splitting error. If we consider multi-dimensional problems without splitting, difficulty arises in tracing characteristics with high order accuracy. Specifically, the evolution of characteristics is subject to the electric field which is determined globally from the distribution of particle densities via the Poisson's equation. In this paper, we propose a novel strategy of tracing characteristics high order in time via a two-stage multi-derivative prediction-correction approach and by using moment equations of the VP system. With the foot of characteristics being accurately located, we proposed to use weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) interpolation to recover function values between grid points, therefore to update solutions at the next time level. The proposed algorithm does not have time step restriction as Eulerian approach and enjoys high order spatial and temporal accuracy. However, such finite difference algorithm does not enjoy mass conservation; we discuss one possible way of resolving such issue and its potential challenge in numerical stability. The performance of the proposed schemes are numerically demonstrated via classical test problems such as Landau damping and two stream instabilities.

We propose a bound-preserving Runge-Kutta (RK) discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method as an efficient, effective and compact numerical approach for numerical simulation of traffic flow problems on networks, with arbitrary high order accuracy. Road networks are modeled by graphs, composed of a finite number of roads that meet at junctions. On each road, a scalar conservation law describes the dynamics, while coupling conditions are specified at junctions to define flow separation or convergence at the points where roads meet. We incorporate such coupling conditions in the RK DG framework, and apply an arbitrary high order bound preserving limiter to the RK DG method to preserve the physical bounds on the network solutions (car density). We showcase the proposed algorithm on several benchmark test cases from the literature, as well as several new challenging examples with rich solution structures. Modeling and simulation of Cauchy problems for traffic flows on networks is notorious for lack of uniqueness or (Lipschitz) continuous dependence. The discontinuous Galerkin method proposed here deals elegantly with these problems, and is perhaps the only realistic and efficient high-order method for network problems.

In this paper, we present error estimates of the integral deferred correction method constructed with stiffly accurate implicit Runge-Kutta methods with a nonsingular matrix $A$ in its Butcher table representation, when applied to stiff problems characterized by a small positive parameter $\varepsilon$. In our error estimates, we expand the global error in powers of $\varepsilon$ and show that the coefficients are global errors of the integral deferred correction method applied to a sequence of differential algebraic systems. A study of these errors and of the remainder of the expansion yields sharp error bounds for the stiff problem. Numerical results for the van der Pol equation are presented {to} illustrate our theoretical findings. Finally, we study the linear stability properties of these methods., Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures

We develop a numerical solver for the integral-differential equations, which describes the radiative transfer of photon distribution in the frequency space with resonant scattering of Lyalpha photons by hydrogen gas in the early universe. The time-dependent solutions of this equation is crucial to the estimation of the effect of the Wouthuysen-Field (WF) coupling in relation to the 21 cm emission and absorption at the epoch of reionization. The resonant scattering leads to the photon distribution in the frequency space to be piecewise smooth containing sharp changes. The weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) scheme is suitable to handle this problem, as this algorithm has been found to be highly stable and robust for solving Boltzmann equation. We test this numerical solver against analytic solutions of the evolution of the photon distribution in rest background, analytic solution in expanding background without resonant scattering and formation of local Boltzmann distribution around the resonant frequency with the temperature same as that of atom for recoil. We find that evolution of photon distribution undergoes three phases; profile is similar to the initial one, a flat plateau (without recoil) or local Boltzmann distribution (with recoil) forms around the resonant frequency, and finally the distribution around the resonant frequency is saturated when the photons from the source is balanced by the redshift of the expansion. This result indicates that the onset of the W-F coupling should not be determined by the third phase, but by the time scale of the second phase. We found that the time scale of the W-F coupling is equal to about a few hundreds of the mean free flight time of photons with resonant frequency, and is independent of the Sobolev parameter if this parameter is much less than 1., Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures