A necessary condition forB-convergence of Runge-Kutta methods

Algebraic stability is a well-known property necessary forB-convergence of a Runge-Kutta method, provided its nodesc _i are such thatc _i – c _j wheneveri j. In this paper a slightly weaker property is established which becomes algebraic stability as soon asc _i – c _j , wheneveri j is excluded.Using this condition it is shown that the Lobatto IIIA methods with more than two stages cannot beB-convergent.This paper was written while the author was visiting the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in the Netherlands, supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (N.W.O.) and by an Erwin Schrödinger scholarship from the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung.