A transformation for the analysis of DIMSIMs

The special case of diagonally-implicit multistage integration methods is considered in which the order, the stage order, the number of values passed between steps and the number of stages in a step, all coincide. It is shown that a similarity transformation can be applied to the matrices characterizing the method so as to simplify the expression for the stability polynomial and thus aid in the search for methods with acceptable stability.Dedicated to Carl-Erik Fröberg on the occasion of his 75th birthday     

On the two classes of high‐order convergent methods of approximate inverse preconditioners for solving linear systems

Two classes of methods for approximate matrix inversion with convergence orders p =3?2^k +1 (Class 1) and p =5?2^k ?1 (Class 2), k ≥1 an integer, are given based on matrix multiplication and matrix addition. These methods perform less number of matrix multiplications compared to the known hyperpower method or p th‐order method for the same orders and can be used to construct approximate inverse preconditioners for solving linear systems. Convergence, error, and stability analyses of the proposed classes of methods are provided. Theoretical results are justified with numerical results obtained by using the proposed methods of orders p =7,13 from Class 1 and the methods with orders p =9,19 from Class 2 to obtain polynomial preconditioners for preconditioning the biconjugate gradient (BICG) method for solving well‐ and ill‐posed problems. From the literature, methods with orders p =8,16 belonging to a family developed by the effective representation of the p th‐order method for orders p =2^k , k is integer k ≥1, and other recently given high‐order convergent methods of orders p =6,7,8,12 for approximate matrix inversion are also used to construct polynomial preconditioners for preconditioning the BICG method to solve the considered problems. Numerical comparisons are given to show the applicability, stability, and computational complexity of the proposed methods by paying attention to the asymptotic convergence rates. It is shown that the BICG method converges very quickly when applied to solve the preconditioned system. Therefore, the cost of constructing these preconditioners is amortized if the preconditioner is to be reused over several systems of same coefficient matrix with different right sides.     

Piecewise polynomial Taylor methods for initial value problems

A class of explicit Taylor-type methods for numerically solving first-order ordinary differential equations is presented. The basic idea is that of generating a piecewise polynomial approximating function, with a given order of differentiability, by repeated Taylor expansion. Sharp error bounds for the approximation and its derivatives are given along with a stability analysis.This work was supported by the United States Atomic Energy Commission.     

Exploiting structure in the construction of DIMSIMs

We describe the structure of the nonlinear system for the coefficients of diagonally implicit multistage integration methods for ordinary differential equations. This structure is then utilized in the search for methods of high order and stage order with a given stability function. New methods were obtained by solving the nonlinear systems by state-of-the-art software based on least squares minimization.     

A Family of Parallel and Interval Iterations for Finding All Roots of a Polynomial Simultaneously with Rapid Convergence

This paper suggests a family of parallel iterations with parameter p for finding all roots of a polynomial simultaneously. The convergence of the methods is of order p+2. The methods may also be applied to interval iterations.     

Galerkin method for Wiener-Hopf operators with piecewise continuous symbol

This paper is concerned with the applicability of maximum defect polynomial (Galerkin) spline approximation methods with graded meshes to Wiener-Hopf operators with matrix-valued piecewise continuous generating function defined on R. For this, an algebra of sequences is introduced, which contains the approximating sequences we are interested in. There is a direct relationship between the stability of the approximation method for a given operator and invertibility of the corresponding sequence in this algebra. Exploring this relationship, the methods of essentialization, localization and identification of the local algebras are used in order to derive stability criteria for the approximation sequences.Supported by grant Praxis XXI/BD/4501/94 from FCT.Partly supported by FCT/BMFT grant 423.     

High order explicit methods for parabolic equations

This paper discusses explicit embedded integration methods with large stability domains of order 3 and 4. The high order produces accurate results, the large stability domains allow some reasonable stiffness, the explicitness enables the method to treat very large problems, often space discretization of parabolic PDEs, and the embedded formulas permit an efficient stepsize control. The construction of these methods is achieved in two steps: firstly we compute stability polynomials of a given order with optimal stability domains, i.e., possessing a Chebyshev alternation; secondly we realize a corresponding explicit Runge-Kutta method with the help of the theory of composition methods. This work was supported by the Russian Fund Fundamental Researches and the Swiss National Science Foundation 20-43.314.95.     

Numerical Stability in the Presence of Variable Coefficients

The main concern of this paper is with the stable discretisation of linear partial differential equations of evolution with time-varying coefficients. We commence by demonstrating that an approximation of the first derivative by a skew-symmetric matrix is fundamental in ensuring stability for many differential equations of evolution. This motivates our detailed study of skew-symmetric differentiation matrices for univariate finite-difference methods. We prove that, in order to sustain a skew-symmetric differentiation matrix of order \(p\ge 2\), a grid must satisfy \(2p-3\) polynomial conditions. Moreover, once it satisfies these conditions, it supports a banded skew-symmetric differentiation matrix of this order and of the bandwidth \(2p-1\), which can be derived in a constructive manner. Some applications require not just skew-symmetry, but also that the growth in the elements of the differentiation matrix is at most linear in the number of unknowns. This is always true for our tridiagonal matrices of order 2 but need not be true otherwise, a subject which we explore further. Another subject which we examine is the existence and practical construction of grids that support skew-symmetric differentiation matrices of a given order. We resolve this issue completely for order-two methods. We conclude the paper with a list of open problems and their discussion.     

On implicit Runge-Kutta methods with high stage order

It is well known that high stage order is a desirable property for implicit Runge-Kutta methods. In this paper it is shown that it is always possible to construct ans-stage IRK method with a given stability function and stage orders−1 if the stability function is an approximation to the exponential function of at least orders. It is further indicated how to construct such methods as well as in which cases the constructed methods will be stiffly accurate.     

A new stability criterion for linear discrete systems

This paper is concerned with the stability of difference equations. A criterion to decide whether a certain polynomial has all its zeros inside the unit circle is applied to multistep linear methods in order to obtain the absolute stability region, and it is shown how this region can be extended. Systems of linear difference equations are also considered and an extension to partial difference equations is discussed.     

On improving the absolute stability of local extrapolation

Summary A widely used technique for improving the accuracy of solutions of initial value problems in ordinary differential equations is local extrapolation. It is well known, however, that when using methods appropriate for solving stiff systems of ODES, the stability of the method can be seriously degraded if local extrapolation is employed. This is due to the fact that performing local extrapolation on a low order method is equivalent to using a higher order formula and this high order formula may not be suitable for solving stiff systems. In the present paper a general approach is proposed whereby the correction term added on in the process of local extrapolation is in a sense a rational, rather than a polynomial, function. This approach allows high order formulae with bounded growth functions to be developed. As an example we derive anA-stable rational correction algorithm based on the trapezoidal rule. This new algorithm is found to be efficient when low accuracy is requested (say a relative accuracy of about 1%) and its performance is compared with that of the more familiar Richardson extrapolation method on a large set of stiff test problems.     

Numerical solution to the deflection of thin plates using the two-dimensional Berger equation with a meshless method based on multiple-scale Pascal polynomials

In this study, we employ Pascal polynomial basis in the two-dimensional Berger equation, which is a fourth order partial differential equation with applications to thin elastic plates. The polynomial approximation method based on Pascal polynomial basis can be readily adapted to obtain the numerical solutions of partial differential equations. However, a drawback with the polynomial basis is that the resulting coefficient matrix for the problem considered may be ill-conditioned. Due to this ill-conditioned behavior, we use a multiple-scale Pascal polynomial method for the Berger equation. The ill-conditioned numbers can be mitigated using this approach. Multiple scales are established automatically by selecting the collocation points in the multiple-scale Pascal polynomial method. This method is also a meshless method because there is no requirement to establish complex grids or for numerical integration. We present the solutions of six linear and nonlinear benchmark problems obtained with the proposed method on complexly shaped domains. The results obtained demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method, as well showing its stability against large noise effects.     

Automatically Discovering Relaxed Lyapunov Functions for Polynomial Dynamical Systems

The notion of Lyapunov function plays a key role in the design and verification of dynamical systems, as well as hybrid and cyber-physical systems. In this paper, to analyze the asymptotic stability of a dynamical system, we generalize standard Lyapunov functions to relaxed Lyapunov functions (RLFs), by considering higher order Lie derivatives. Furthermore, we present a method for automatically discovering polynomial RLFs for polynomial dynamical systems (PDSs). Our method is relatively complete in the sense that it is able to discover all polynomial RLFs with a given predefined template for any PDS. Therefore it can also generate all polynomial RLFs for the PDS by enumerating all polynomial templates.     

On the Linear Stability of Splitting Methods

A comprehensive linear stability analysis of splitting methods is carried out by means of a 2×2 matrix K(x) with polynomial entries (the stability matrix) and the stability polynomial p(x) (the trace of K(x) divided by two). An algorithm is provided for determining the coefficients of all possible time-reversible splitting schemes for a prescribed stability polynomial. It is shown that p(x) carries essentially all the information needed to construct processed splitting methods for numerically approximating the evolution of linear systems. By conveniently selecting the stability polynomial, new integrators with processing for linear equations are built which are orders of magnitude more efficient than other algorithms previously available. This paper is dedicated to Arieh Iserles on the occasion of his 60th anniversary.     

Projection Volumes of Hyperplane Arrangements

We prove that for any finite real hyperplane arrangement the average projection volumes of the maximal cones are given by the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of the arrangement. This settles the conjecture of Drton and Klivans that this held for all finite real reflection arrangements. The methods used are geometric and combinatorial. As a consequence, we determine that the angle sums of a zonotope are given by the characteristic polynomial of the order dual of the intersection lattice of the arrangement.     

A special family of Runge-Kutta methods for solving stiff differential equations

An efficient way of implementing Implicit Runge-Kutta Methods was proposed by Butcher [3]. He showed that the most efficient methods when using this implementation are those whose characteristic polynomial of the Runge-Kutta matrix has a single reals-fold zero. In this paper we will construct such a family of methods and give some results concerning their maximum attainable order and stability properties. Some consideration is also given to showing how these methods can be efficiently implemented and, in particular, how local error estimates can be obtained by the use of embedding techniques.     

Adaptive methods for periodic initial value problems of second order differential equations

In this paper numerical methods involving higher order derivatives for the solution of periodic initial value problems of second order differential equations are derived. The methods depend upon a parameter p > 0 and reduce to their classical counter parts as p → 0. The methods are periodically stable when the parameter p is chosen as the square of the frequency of the linear homogeneous equation. The numerical methods involving derivatives of order up to 2q are of polynomial order 2q and trigonometric order one. Numerical results are presented for both the linear and nonlinear problems. The applicability of implicit adaptive methods to linear systems is illustrated.     

Block boundary value methods for linear weakly singular Volterra integro-differential equations

A class of block boundary value methods (BBVMs) is constructed for linear weakly singular Volterra integro-differential equations (VIDEs). The convergence and stability of these methods is analysed. It is shown that optimal convergence rates can be obtained by using special graded meshes. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the sharpness of our theoretical results and the computational effectiveness of the methods. Moreover, a numerical comparison with piecewise polynomial collocation methods for VIDEs is given, which shows that the BBVMs are comparable in numerical precision.

     

The application of the Ehrlich-Aberth method to structured polynomial eigenvalue problems

An algorithm for the application of the Ehrlich-Aberth method to polynomial eigenvalue problems (PEPs) is proposed. The computational complexity of the algorithm is only quadratic with respect to the degree of the polynomial, where customary matrix methods have cubic complexity. For the case of some structured PEPs a strategy is given in order to exploit the structure and obtain the induced coupling in the spectrum. Numerical experiments are provided for the particular case of even/odd PEPs. This communication is based on joint work with Dario A. Bini and Luca Gemignani. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The group and the minimal polynomial of a graph

This paper presents some results linking the minimal polynomial of the adjacency matrix of a graph with its group structure. An upper bound on the order of the group is derived for graphs whose minimal and characteristic polynomials are identical. It is also shown that for a graph with transitive group, the degree of the minimal polynomial is bounded above by the number of orbits of the stabilizer of any given element. Finally, the order of the group of a point-symmetric graph with a prime number of points is shown to depend on the degree of the minimal polynomial, and an algorithm for constructing such a group is given.