Paper detail

Travelling wave solutions of multisymplectic discretizations of semi-linear wave equations

How well do multisymplectic discretisations preserve travelling wave solutions? To answer this question, the 5-point central difference scheme is applied to the semi-linear wave equation. A travelling wave ansatz leads to an ordinary difference equation, whose solutions correspond to the numerical scheme and can be compared to travelling wave solutions of the corresponding PDE. For a discontinuous nonlinearity the difference equation is solved exactly. For continuous nonlinearities the difference equation is solved using a Fourier series, and resonances that depend on the grid-size are revealed for a smooth nonlinearity. In general, the infinite dimensional functional equation, which must be solved to get the travelling wave solutions, is intractable, but backward error analysis proves to be a powerful tool, as it provides a way to study the solutions of the equation through a simple ODE that describes the behavior to arbitrarily high order. A general framework for using backward error analysis to analyze preservation of travelling waves for other equations and discretisations is presented. Then, the advantages that multisymplectic methods have over other methods are briefly highlighted.