Explicit volume-preserving splitting methods for polynomial divergence-free vector fields

We present new, explicit, volume-preserving splitting methods for polynomial divergence-free vector fields of arbitrary degree (both positive and negative). The main idea is to decompose the divergence polynomial by means of an appropriate basis for polynomials: the monomial basis. For each monomial basis function, the split fields are then identified by collecting the appropriate terms in the vector field so that each split vector field is volume preserving. We show that each split field can be integrated exactly by analytical methods. Thus, the composition yields a volume preserving numerical method. Our numerical tests indicate that the methods compare favorably to standard integrators both in the quality of the numerical solution and the computational effort.