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The entropy-based moment method is a well-known discretization for the velocity variable in kinetic equations which has many desirable theoretical properties but is difficult to implement with high-order numerical methods. The regularized entropy-based moment method was recently introduced to remove one of the main challenges in the implementation of the entropy-based moment method, namely the requirement of the realizability of the numerical solution. In this work we use the method of relative entropy to prove the convergence of the regularized method to the original method as the regularization parameter goes to zero and give convergence rates. Our main assumptions are the boundedness of the velocity domain and that the original moment solution is Lipschitz continuous in space and bounded away from the boundary of realizability. We provide results from numerical simulations showing that the convergence rates we prove are optimal.

We present a new entropy-based moment method for the velocity discretization of kinetic equations. This method is based on a regularization of the optimization problem defining the original entropy-based moment method, and this gives the new method the advantage that the moment vectors of the solution do not have to take on realizable values. We show that this equation still retains many of the properties of the original equations, including hyperbolicity, an entropy-dissipation law, and rotational invariance. The cost of the regularization is mismatch between the moment vector of the solution and that of the ansatz returned by the regularized optimization problem. However, we show how to control this error using the parameter defining the regularization. This suggests that with proper choice of the regularization parameter, the new method can be used to generate accurate solutions of the original entropy-based moment method, and we confirm this with numerical simulations.

Using standard intrusive techniques when solving hyperbolic conservation laws with uncertainties can lead to oscillatory solutions as well as nonhyperbolic moment systems. The Intrusive Polynomial Moment (IPM) method ensures hyperbolicity of the moment system while restricting oscillatory over- and undershoots of specified bounds. In this contribution, we derive a second-order discretization of the IPM moment system which fulfills the maximum principle. This task is carried out by investigating violations of the specified bounds due to the errors from the numerical optimization required by the scheme. This analysis gives weaker conditions on the entropy that is used, allowing the choice of an entropy which enables choosing the exact minimal and maximal value of the initial condition as bounds. Solutions calculated with the derived scheme are nonoscillatory while fulfilling the maximum principle. The second-order accuracy of our scheme leads to significantly reduced numerical costs.

Entropy-based (M_N) moment closures for kinetic equations are defined by a constrained optimization problem that must be solved at every point in a space-time mesh, making it important to solve these optimization problems accurately and efficiently. We present a complete and practical numerical algorithm for solving the dual problem in one-dimensional, slab geometries. The closure is only well-defined on the set of moments that are realizable from a positive underlying distribution, and as the boundary of the realizable set is approached, the dual problem becomes increasingly difficult to solve due to ill-conditioning of the Hessian matrix. To improve the condition number of the Hessian, we advocate the use of a change of polynomial basis, defined using a Cholesky factorization of the Hessian, that permits solution of problems nearer to the boundary of the realizable set. We also advocate a fixed quadrature scheme, rather than adaptive quadrature, since the latter introduces unnecessary expense and changes the computationally realizable set as the quadrature changes. For very ill-conditioned problems, we use regularization to make the optimization algorithm robust. We design a manufactured solution and demonstrate that the adaptive-basis optimization algorithm reduces the need for regularization. This is important since we also show that regularization slows, and even stalls, convergence of the numerical simulation when refining the space-time mesh. We also simulate two well-known benchmark problems. There we find that our adaptive-basis, fixed-quadrature algorithm uses less regularization than alternatives, although differences in the resulting numerical simulations are more sensitive to the regularization strategy than to the choice of basis.