Convergence of a finite volume scheme for nonlinear degenerate parabolic equations

Summary. One approximates the entropy weak solution u of a nonlinear parabolic degenerate equation by a piecewise constant function using a discretization in space and time and a finite volume scheme. The convergence of to u is shown as the size of the space and time steps tend to zero. In a first step, estimates on are used to prove the convergence, up to a subsequence, of to a measure valued entropy solution (called here an entropy process solution). A result of uniqueness of the entropy process solution is proved, yielding the strong convergence of to{\it u}. Some on a model equation are shown. Received September 27, 2000 / Published online October 17, 2001     

Analysis of a symplectic difference scheme for a coupled nonlinear Schrödinger system

In general, proofs of convergence and stability are difficult for symplectic schemes of nonlinear equations. In this paper, a symplectic difference scheme is proposed for an initial-boundary value problem of a coupled nonlinear Schrödinger system. An important lemma and an induction argument are used to prove the unique solvability, convergence and stability of numerical solutions. An iterative algorithm is also proposed for the symplectic scheme and its convergence is proved. Numerical examples show the efficiency of the symplectic scheme and the correction of our numerical analysis.     

Convergent difference schemes for nonlinear parabolic equations and mean curvature motion

Summary. Explicit finite difference schemes are given for a collection of parabolic equations which may have all of the following complex features: degeneracy, quasilinearity, full nonlinearity, and singularities. In particular, the equation of “motion by mean curvature” is included. The schemes are monotone and consistent, so that convergence is guaranteed by the general theory of approximation of viscosity solutions of fully nonlinear problems. In addition, an intriguing new type of nonlocal problem is analyzed which is related to the schemes, and another very different sort of approximation is presented as well. Received January 10, 1995     

Maximum norm error bound of a linearized difference scheme for a coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations

In this article, a linearized conservative difference scheme for a coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations is studied. The discrete energy method and an useful technique are used to analyze the difference scheme. It is shown that the difference solution unconditionally converges to the exact solution with second order in the maximum norm. Numerical experiments are presented to support the theoretical results.     

An Engquist-Osher type finite difference scheme with a discontinuous flux function in space

An Engquist-Osher type finite difference scheme is derived for dealing with scalar conservation laws having a flux that is spatially dependent through a possibly discontinuous coefficient. The new monotone difference scheme is based on introducing a new interface numerical flux function, which is called a generalized Engquist-Osher flux. By means of this scheme, the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to the scalar conservation laws are obtained and the convergence theorem is established. Some numerical examples are presented and the corresponding numerical results are displayed to illustrate the efficiency of the methods.     

Nonlinear scheme with high accuracy for nonlinear coupled parabolic-hyperbolic system

A nonlinear finite difference scheme with high accuracy is studied for a class of two-dimensional nonlinear coupled parabolic-hyperbolic system. Rigorous theoretical analysis is made for the stability and convergence properties of the scheme, which shows it is unconditionally stable and convergent with second order rate for both spatial and temporal variables. In the argument of theoretical results, difficulties arising from the nonlinearity and coupling between parabolic and hyperbolic equations are overcome, by an ingenious use of the method of energy estimation and inductive hypothesis reasoning. The reasoning method here differs from those used for linear implicit schemes, and can be widely applied to the studies of stability and convergence for a variety of nonlinear schemes for nonlinear PDE problems. Numerical tests verify the results of the theoretical analysis. Particularly it is shown that the scheme is more accurate and faster than a previous two-level nonlinear scheme with first order temporal accuracy.     

High-order compact finite difference scheme for option pricing in stochastic volatility models

We derive a new high-order compact finite difference scheme for option pricing in stochastic volatility models. The scheme is fourth order accurate in space and second order accurate in time. Under some restrictions, theoretical results like unconditional stability in the sense of von Neumann are presented. Where the analysis becomes too involved we validate our findings by a numerical study. Numerical experiments for the European option pricing problem are presented. We observe fourth order convergence for non-smooth payoff.     

A finite volume scheme for nonlinear parabolic equations derived from one-dimensional local dirichlet problems

In this paper, we propose a new method to compute the numerical flux of a finite volume scheme, used for the approximation of the solution of the nonlinear partial differential equation u_t+div(qf(u))−ΔΦ(u)=0 in a 1D, 2D or 3D domain. The function Φ is supposed to be strictly increasing, but some values s such that Φ′(s)=0 can exist. The method is based on the solution, at each interface between two control volumes, of the nonlinear elliptic two point boundary value problem (qf(υ)+(Φ(υ))′)′=0 with Dirichlet boundary conditions given by the values of the discrete approximation in both control volumes. We prove the existence of a solution to this two point boundary value problem. We show that the expression for the numerical flux can be yielded without referring to this solution. Furthermore, we prove that the so designed finite volume scheme has the expected stability properties and that its solution converges to the weak solution of the continuous problem. Numerical results show the increase of accuracy due to the use of this scheme, compared to some other schemes.     

Solving parabolic and hyperbolic equations by the generalized finite difference method

Classical finite difference schemes are in wide use today for approximately solving partial differential equations of mathematical physics. An evolution of the method of finite differences has been the development of generalized finite difference (GFD) method, that can be applied to irregular grids of points.     

A second order backward difference method with variable steps for a parabolic problem

The numerical solution of a parabolic problem is studied. The equation is discretized in time by means of a second order two step backward difference method with variable time step. A stability result is proved by the energy method under certain restrictions on the ratios of successive time steps. Error estimates are derived and applications are given to homogenous equations with initial data of low regularity.     

An efficient nonlinear iteration scheme for nonlinear parabolic-hyperbolic system

A nonlinear iteration method named the Picard-Newton iteration is studied for a two-dimensional nonlinear coupled parabolic-hyperbolic system. It serves as an efficient method to solve a nonlinear discrete scheme with second spatial and temporal accuracy. The nonlinear iteration scheme is constructed with a linearization-discretization approach through discretizing the linearized systems of the original nonlinear partial differential equations. It can be viewed as an improved Picard iteration, and can accelerate convergence over the standard Picard iteration. Moreover, the discretization with second-order accuracy in both spatial and temporal variants is introduced to get the Picard-Newton iteration scheme. By using the energy estimate and inductive hypothesis reasoning, the difficulties arising from the nonlinearity and the coupling of different equation types are overcome. It follows that the rigorous theoretical analysis on the approximation of the solution of the Picard-Newton iteration scheme to the solution of the original continuous problem is obtained, which is different from the traditional error estimate that usually estimates the error between the solution of the nonlinear discrete scheme and the solution of the original problem. Moreover, such approximation is independent of the iteration number. Numerical experiments verify the theoretical result, and show that the Picard-Newton iteration scheme with second-order spatial and temporal accuracy is more accurate and efficient than that of first-order temporal accuracy.     

Locally linearized fractional step methods for nonlinear parabolic problems

This work deals with the efficient numerical solution of a class of nonlinear time-dependent reaction-diffusion equations. Via the method of lines approach, we first perform the spatial discretization of the original problem by applying a mimetic finite difference scheme. The system of ordinary differential equations arising from that process is then integrated in time with a linearly implicit fractional step method. For that purpose, we locally decompose the discrete nonlinear diffusion operator using suitable Taylor expansions and a domain decomposition splitting technique. The totally discrete scheme considers implicit time integrations for the linear terms while explicitly handling the nonlinear ones. As a result, the original problem is reduced to the solution of several linear systems per time step which can be trivially decomposed into a set of uncoupled parallelizable linear subsystems. The convergence of the proposed methods is illustrated by numerical experiments.     

Error estimate of a first-order time discretization scheme for the geodynamo equations

In this paper, we analyze a first-order time discretization scheme for a nonlinear geodynamo model and carry out the convergence analysis of this numerical scheme. It is concluded that our numerical scheme converges with first-order accuracy in the sense of L²$L^2$-norm with respect to the velocity field u$\mathit{u}$ and the magnetic field B$\mathit{B}$ and with half-order accuracy in time for the total kinematic pressure P.     

Contractivity of domain decomposition splitting methods for nonlinear parabolic problems

This work deals with the efficient numerical solution of nonlinear parabolic problems posed on a two-dimensional domain Ω. We consider a suitable decomposition of domain Ω and we construct a subordinate smooth partition of unity that we use to rewrite the original equation. Then, the combination of standard spatial discretizations with certain splitting time integrators gives rise to unconditionally contractive schemes. The efficiency of the resulting algorithms stems from the fact that the calculations required at each internal stage can be performed in parallel.     

A robust and accurate finite difference method for a generalized Black-Scholes equation

In this paper we present a numerical method for a generalized Black-Scholes equation, which is used for option pricing. The method is based on a central difference spatial discretization on a piecewise uniform mesh and an implicit time stepping technique. Our scheme is stable for arbitrary volatility and arbitrary interest rate, and is second-order convergent with respect to the spatial variable. Furthermore, the present paper efficiently treats the singularities of the non-smooth payoff function. Numerical results support the theoretical results.     

The role of coefficients of a general SPDE on the stability and convergence of a finite difference method

In this paper for the approximate solution of stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) of Itô-type, the stability and application of a class of finite difference method with regard to the coefficients in the equations is analyzed. The finite difference methods discussed here will be either explicit or implicit and a comparison between them will be reported. We prove the consistency and stability of these methods and investigate the influence of the multiplier (particularly multiplier of the random noise) in mean square stability. From stochastic version of Lax-Richtmyer the convergence of these methods under some conditions are established. Numerical experiments are included to show the efficiency of the methods.     

Two-grid methods for finite volume element approximations of nonlinear parabolic equations

Two-grid methods are studied for solving a two dimensional nonlinear parabolic equation using finite volume element method. The methods are based on one coarse-grid space and one fine-grid space. The nonsymmetric and nonlinear iterations are only executed on the coarse grid and the fine-grid solution can be obtained in a single symmetric and linear step. It is proved that the coarse grid can be much coarser than the fine grid. The two-grid methods achieve asymptotically optimal approximation as long as the mesh sizes satisfy h=O(H³|lnH|)$h=O\left(H^3|lnH|\right)$. As a result, solving such a large class of nonlinear parabolic equations will not be much more difficult than solving one single linearized equation.